The 400-strong chain, owned by Gondola Holdings, has overhauled the décor, style of service and dishes at its restaurants in Richmond, Camberley, Charlotte Street, London, Euston Road, London, and High Holborn, London, and will apply the formula to all new openings and refurbishments in the future.
Each restaurant will adopt the new black and white stripes within an individual design sympathetic to that branch’s location. For instance the design of Pizza Express Euston Road, which sits opposite the British Library, is influenced by famous authors, while that of Charlotte Street mimics the Morse Code as its inventor, Samuel Morse, lived nearby.
Inspired by the black and white shirts of its pizza chefs, introduced by founder Peter Boizot in the 1960s, Pizza Express has worked with designers such as Ab Rogers to transform the interiors of participating restaurants through wall murals, monochrome chairs, and stripy plates and cups.
In a bid to improve its service standards the group has retrained 10,000 team members to deliver ‘memorable experiences’ for its diners, with a focus on allowing their personalities to shine through and creating their own guidelines on what depicts great service.
Sharing plates
In terms of its menus, Pizza Express has added a range of new dishes including sharing starters Classic Italian Antipasto, Chargrilled Vegetable Antipasto and Rosemary Pizza Bread, sharing breads Brushetta Italia, Formaggio Chilli Bread and Calabrese Al Forno, new Romana pizzas the Pomodoro Pesto pizza and Salsicca Speziata pizza, and Dolcetti mini desserts such as Chocolate Fudge Cake Dolcetti and Dough Balls with Nutella.
Pizzaiolos have been trained to perform pizza theatre through the tossing of dough in the air, and all counters will have ‘stage lighting’ to encourage such shows.
Emma Woods, marketing director at PizzaExpress, said: “Pizza Express has always been pioneering and believes it’s really important to innovate, especially during tough times. We hope that our customers love the refresh as much as we do.”
The refresh comes months after Pizza Express announced the roll out of the ‘Living Lab design’ of its Richmond branch to five existing restaurants in Balham, Fulham, Brighton, Glasgow and Newbury.