Friday Five: the week's top news
- Carluccio's, the 75-strong Italian casual dining chain, announced plans to pay for settled status for EU staff in the UK after Brexit. The chain, which says it is the first large restaurant brand to make such an offer, will pay application fees for its 1,550 non-British EU employees.
- Chef Ernst Van Zyl and his partner Elizabeth Kellett have taken The Glazebury pub in Warrington. The chef is to oversee a modern British fine dining restaurant, which will offer a tasting menu, while Kellett will run the front of house.
- Polpo group has put its Italian-inspired restaurant Polpetto in Soho up for sale. Polpo's eponymous Notting Hill restaurant, which launched in 2014, has also been put on the market.
- In other restaurant news, recently launched Bristol restaurant Wallfish & Wellbourne Bistro announced its closure after less than two month's trading. The venue, the product of a merger between two well-regarded Bristol restaurants, stated the closure was due to "events beyond our control".
- Sourdough pizza chain Three Joes Pizza launched a £400,000 crowdfunding campaign towards its expansion. The group, the brainchild of former Byron operations director Peter Bruton, Pod founder Tim Hall and Emma Blackmore, has already raised just over £330,000 of its target from 77 investors.
For more of this week's news, click here.