London’s Pizza Pilgrims chain has record year as it seeks bigger UK slice

London-based Pizza Pilgrims has reported record results as it continues its expansion plans into Scotland and Wales.

The pizza chain, founded by brothers Thom and James Elliott in 2012, has begun constructing a new site in Cardiff and is on its way to establishing its first Scottish site in Edinburgh after what was seen as a record-breaking 2023, according to a report in the Times.

Pizza Pilgrims’ revenue jumped 37 per cent to £28.7m in the year to June 25, 2023, with pre-tax profit reaching £700,000, the Times reported.

Its underlying earnings before exception items nearly doubled to £2.4m, up from £1.1m in 2022.

“We’re definitely not seeing any boredom out there,” Elliott told the Times.

“We are really geeky about pizza, me and my brother. We wrote a book about pizza in the early period of Covid-19 that went really well and so we’re commissioning our second book.”

Pizza in the Post, which are ready-to-make pizza kits, have reportedly saved the brothers from post-pandemic hospitality woes.

“It went bananas,” Elliott told the Times. “We went from never having done one of these kits to doing 10,000 units a week. We were turning over £250,000 a week.”

Boris Johnson and Rishi Sunak also joined in on the fun during the pandemic to have what was a “surreal” discussion about Pizza Pilgrims being “Covid-proof”, Elliott said.