SOFT DATA
Founded in 1965 by Peter Boizot, Pizza Marzano opened its first restaurant in London’s Wardour Street. Inspired by a trip to Italy, Boizot brought back to London a pizza oven from Naples and a chef from Sicily. Pizza Marzano specialises in handmade pizza, rolling their own dough on site before cooking in a pizza oven. Pizza Marzano, previously Pizza Express, are slowly rebranding to ‘Marzano’ as part of their strategy to offer a more diversified Italian menu with higher value items such as steaks and seafood.
In July 2014 the group was sold to the China-based private equity firm Hony Capital (Beijing) in a deal worth £900 million ($1.54 billion). They cooperate with Wechat to launch an activity that customers can buy one main food and get one free which attracts a lot of first time customers. Pizza Marzano have a strong marketing team and have collaborated with NZTE to promote NZ products several times.
Last year Marzano opened a new brand and chain of restaurants in China called 'Pizza Marzano Select', which is a simplified version of Marzano with a smaller menu, cheaper prices and smaller sites.
