In the first week of this month, we reported that Pizza Express was set to close over 60 restaurants shut for good, with 1,100 job at risk. Now it has been confirmed that the group is to close 73 sites with a higher number of job losses.
The casual dining chain owns 449 restaurant across the UK, with 166 of sites currently open. Pizza Express has released a list of the restaurants that are earmarked for permanent closure.
The company stated that although the majority of its restaurants were profitable before lockdown was imposed, earnings had been declining across the Pizza Express estate for the last three years.
Pizza Express also said most of the pizzerias set to close were near other stores already open or slated to soon open.
Zoe Bowley, Managing Director for UK & Ireland, said, 'Unfortunately, the impact of the global pandemic has meant that we have had to make some incredibly tough decisions to safeguard Pizza Express for the long term.
'We have confirmed that 73 of our pizzerias are proposed to close permanently.
'Our focus is on our people whose jobs are impacted and we will be doing everything we can either to redeploy them or to support them in finding roles elsewhere.'