Pizza Express to cut 1,300 jobs as trading slumps amid new lockdowns

Restaurant chain announces fresh round of redundancies just weeks after previous cuts

(PA)

Pizza Express is cutting around 1,300 more jobs across its UK restaurants after recent trading worsened in the face of tightened restrictions.

It comes just two months after the chain announced plans to cut 1,100 jobs and close 73 branches as part of a restructuring deal. No additional restaurants will shut as part of the latest round of cuts.

Pizza Express managing director Zoe Bowley said the pandemic had had a “profound” impact on the restaurant industry.

“Unfortunately, the recent increase in Covid-19 cases is again causing footfall to decline across the UK,” Ms Bowley said. 

"As this is expected to continue for some months, we sadly need to make changes that will impact more of our team members.

"Our people remain at the heart of our business and we are doing what we can to support those who are affected.

"We believe that this difficult decision will give us more resilience through the next six months and help us to continue serving our customers in our restaurants and at home in the years ahead."

Restaurants have struggled to recover from the lockdown imposed between March and May, with thousands of redundancies announced by dozens of chains since the pandemic began.

New restrictions across much of the UK and the threat of another national lockdown have forced restauranteurs to again look at cutting costs.

Pizza Express already had problems before coronavirus, namely the high interest payments on its £1bn debt pile. Much of that debt goes back to a 2006 takeover by private equity firm Cinven. 

Cinven borrowed money to buy Pizza Express, saddling the company with the debt. Another private equity group, Hony Capital, increased the company’s debt further after buying it from Cinven in 2014.