Speaking at The Omnichannel Foodservice Conference earlier this week, Zoe Bowley said that the Friday and Saturday night fixtures for England’s games were bad timing for the restaurant sector and negatively impacted on dining-in sales, but that the ability to deliver to customers meant this could be mitigated.
“We are in the middle of the World Cup now and historically as an operator I would have sat with my head in my hands with an England game at 7pm on a Friday night in winter in the run up to Christmas,” she said. “And now the quarter finals on Saturday night at 7pm, genuinely writing off one of the busiest Saturday nights of the year.”
“But actually now we embrace it. We’ve seen record delivery sales going through in the World Cup this Saturday in trading this week.”
Bowley said she expected many of the thousands of bookings the group has taken for between 6pm and 9pm on Saturday (10 December), when England plays its quarter final match against France, to become no-shows.
“Quite frankly customers won’t have connected the dots yet and they will become no shows for sure, but what we’ll do is translated them into the delivery channel or try and see if they can come in earlier or later. That is an opportunity we didn’t have a few years ago.”
PizzaExpress began offering delivery in 2016 with an exclusive deal with Deliveroo but in the fourth quarter of this year it signed partnerships with Just Eat and Uber Eats, which has given the company a much broader cross section of customers who know have access to its pizzas, said Bowley.
Delivery challenges
Delivery has not been without its challenges for the restaurant group, with some venues in the group struggling to cope with continued high demand for delivery once its restaurants reopened after lockdown.
“Our restaurants are not designed for delivery,” said Bowley. “Some were built 30 or 40 years ago. All products go through the oven, we have no friers, and no microwaves. On a Friday night sometimes it is just carnage because the delivery channel and the restaurant channel are demanding pizzas at the same time.”
The company recently invested £1.5m in optimising its delivery offer, including creating delivery hatches in its restaurants ad well as dedicated delivery zones.