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Pizza Express: from the humorous to the serious
Celebrity talks and stand-up comedy is one of the ways Pizza Express is looking at to tackle its sales decline in the UK.
News reports estimate that losses at Pizza Express reached £17 million in 2016, compared to a £10 million loss in the previous year. Like-for-like sales in the UK and Ireland fell by 0.9% in 2016.
To fight this, Pizza Express is taking a closer look at its restaurants. A new programme, Pizza Express Live, that will include comedy nights and sit down talks with top celebrities, has been introduced. The restaurant chain already has outlets that run jazz nights – now it wants to add on funk and salsa too.
In the casual dining business, Pizza Express is the only restaurant to offer ‘live’ events such as these. And when it comes to public perception, Pizza Express performs quite well in the popularity stakes. According to the YouGov BrandIndex – which is a daily measure of the public’s perception of brands across a range of measures, including value, impression and satisfaction - the brand scores highly when it comes to reputation and brand impression, ranking first on a list of eight fast food brands.
Its score of +5.3 places it well above other competitors. Runner up Pizza Hut’s score is -10.5, and has seen a “statistically significant” decline alongside Greggs, Burger King and KFC.