If you haven’t heard, Pizza Express is reportedly preparing to go into crisis talks with creditors. Rumours of the chain’s bankruptcy have been around for a while, but the optimistic among us have soldiered on, consuming our share of dough balls in garlic butter as regularly as possible in desperate solidarity. Mere days ago, Bloomberg reported that Pizza Express bosses had hired a financial advisor to handle their debt talks. They have declined to comment on the matter, but according to sources close to the pizza ovens, it doesn’t sound good. The company’s earnings have been falling in the past few years, as its debt escalates.
It’s been dire in the pizza sector more broadly, too, with long-time rival Prezzo closing 94 of its restaurants and old mate Jamie Oliver shutting down his Italian chain across the country in May. People in the know blame the changing habits of customers; it’s a tough time to make dough. Times have changed drastically for Pizza Express, which has, in its time, been wildly successful. Back in the 90s, literally hundreds of branches were opened across the nation, with profits multiplying exponentially and securing the chain as the beloved household name it is now. It will be a monumentally sad day, when Pizza Express admit defeat.
This distressing news comes just weeks after the enduringly excellent pizza chain was voted the United Kingdom’s most popular casual restaurant. Apparently, Andy Murray has a Pollo Pizza (a stellar choice) before every tennis tournament. Did you know they hold jazz evenings, as well as birthday parties? The place! Is an institution!
The cheesy aficionados of Pizza Express have clearly been giving away too many 2-for-1, 3-courses-for-£12 discount codes. They are allegedly in £1.6 million of debt per restaurant, which sounds… bad. What can we do? How can we rescue the greatest pizza restaurant in modern Britain? The truth is that the increasingly likely prospect of its closure is nothing short of a national disaster. In fact, they have restaurants in Asia, let’s declare it an international disaster. It is a travesty and a tragedy. I do not know the usual protocol for culinary calamities of this scale, but we must immediately enact some sort of community action plan. Pizza Express must be saved.
As someone who survived an eating disorder and was frightened of pizza for many years, this restaurant has become a safe space for me. It is a place of joy, and gluttony, and comfort. It is a place we congregate to feast on the greatest cuisine in the known universe. It’s affordable and approachable and delicious. It’s reliable and accessible and dependable. It’s consistent in its quality, its portions and its décor. It’s the perfect venue for dates, both romantic and platonic. It’s a family-friendly restaurant and frankly, I will be distraught if it closes before I have the chance to have children and then take them there for pizza. I go to Pizza Express pretty regularly; enough times for my mother to register her concern that pizza has become one of my main food groups. I go there with my favourite people. I go there to celebrate and to commiserate. I go there to order the Polla Ad Astra, because through chicken, we get to the stars.
I have had a complicated relationship with food my entire life, but I have finally discovered how wonderful it is to eat for pleasure – and Pizza Express is truly my favourite and most treasured place to do that. And it’s not just me. News that Pizza Express may be shutting down has inspired people to go mad with nostalgia on Twitter. They’re declaring their solidarity with the company, expressing their love for this national institution and vowing to eat however many dough balls is necessary to save it from its unjust and premature closure.
Today, and all days, we stand with the people who make, serve and eat pizza. We stand with the employees of Pizza Express, who deserve to keep their noble jobs, bringing us Americano pizza whenever we need it, with decent vegan options too. I have already WhatsApped several friends to organise outings to our local branches ASAP and I suggest you do the same. We can only hope it’s not too late to save the United Kingdom’s favourite casual restaurant.
Kate Leaver is a journalist and author of The Friendship Cure
Correction: A previous version of this article claimed Prezzo had closed 94% of its restaurants, when it should have said 94 restaurants. This has since been amended.