Pizza Rossa Ltd plans to establish a chain of quick-service pizzerias in London, specializing in premium Italian-style pizza al taglio served swiftly and at reasonable prices. The business model leverages centralized production to ensure scalability and efficiency, aiming to capture the time-constrained office worker demographic while competing with other fast food chains that do not offer pizza. The company seeks £430,000 in seed funding for initial expansion, with ambitious plans to grow to over 100 locations through franchising and partnerships.

1. Executive summary
October 2013

2. Overvie
Pizza Rossa Ltd will create a chain of Italian-style quick service pizzerias in London.
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The mission is to become the namesake brand for premium pizza al taglio (pizza bythe-square-slice) in the UK.
Our delicious high quality square pizza is freshly made daily, easy to eat-on-the-go,
low-calorie and guaranteed to be served within 90 seconds from order. It is great
value for money too at £3.00 to £4.00 a slice. Extensive tests have already told us
customers love our pizza.
We will also serve best quality, high profit hot drinks and other great Italian food.
Key in our proposition is centralised production that leads to significant scalability in
number of outlets in prime high footfall locations.
Our business plan won the annual London Business School Business Plan
Competition and arrived second in the European final against teams from the best
European business schools.

3. Industry and Competition
Fast food experienced 16% growth during the crisis (Keynote) and is looking at 22%
further growth by 2016 (Mintel).
Our main competitors are Pret, Eat, MacDonald’s, Itsu, Tortilla and similar quick
service outlets, none of which sell pizza.
There is a growth trend, with seven Italian pizzerias al taglio in London in 2009,
twenty in May 2013 and a recent opening within Selfridges. All but two grew during
the period.
We don’t compete against Pizza Express and Domino’s because we target a different
segment.
Given the existence of the above pizzerias, we do not expect Pizza Express and others
to react to our presence. Should they respond, this would mean cannibalizing their
production systems, which is unlikely. If they react, once we expand, we will already
have momentum in London and start franchising elsewhere.

4. Target market
Pizza holds 11% share of the overall fast food market. In the last three months 40% of
restaurant goers ate Italian (Mintel, 2012).
55% of the British workforce takes lunch break every day of the working week,
spending on average 29 minutes. The average willingness to pay for a fast food meal
in central London is £6, which represents the average spend in our shops.
This is a business protected from economic cycles.
- During the recession many restaurant customers converged towards premium
quality fast food options.
- In economic boom times premium quality fast food attracts also less affluent
customers.
Pizza Rossa’s target customers are 18-45 year old, time-constrained office workers
craving a tasty, quick, easy-to-eat and light meal that is good value for money.

5. Products
Our core product is pizza that tastes fantastic when re-heated and will sit at the top
of London’s pizza-by-the-slice offering.
Moreover, our pizza is served hot in less than 90 seconds from order great value for
money easy to eat on the go less than 300 calories per slice one square piece is
sufficient for a light meal.
We will also serve other Italian quality food and hot drinks to extend the selling hours
in the day.

6. Testing the Model
Corrado Accardi developed the business model after studying professional pizzamaking at a leading pizza school in Italy.
Subsequently he worked in a pizzeria al taglio to test the validity of the Pizza Rossa
concept.
Recently, he has run pop up events to further prove the concept by selling our pizza.
He achieved 74% average gross margin. Over 80% of the customers liked the pizza,
approved the price point and would purchase again.

7. Strategy and Competitive
Advantage
No incumbent London takeaway pizzeria has been able to scale up. Competitors need
kitchens in all new premises, which require restaurant or hot food takeaway. These
attract high premiums to rent licensed venues, bigger fit out costs, more labor,
inventory and equipment and lack of quality consistency between outlets.
Pizza Rossa’s dough-making process creates a competitive edge because our pizza is
made centrally and transported daily to our outlets. We do not need expensive
licensed premises and thus generate savings in rent premiums, capex and operating
expenses. Our strategy is to create a network of small retail outlets (15-40sqm, no
kitchen) in prime locations in high streets, shopping malls and railway stations, where
food will only be reheated at point of sale.
Due to our small outlet size, we do not compete for the sites with Pret, Subway, etc.

8. Marketing
We will invest in online marketing campaigns, use a prominent PR agency to obtain
low-cost coverage by the media and offer loyalty schemes to local offices to maximize
repeat business.
Our initial target networks include Italians of London and the London Business School
community (i.e. over 40,000 Londoners). Access to them will be facilitated by our
being part of the London Business School’s Incubator.

9. Management Team
Corrado Accardi – Founder and CEO
- Executive MBA at London Business School
- 15 years in hospitality property development (incl. restaurant fit outs)
- Corrado has covered all costs to date and is committed full time to the venture
Robin Walker - Non Executive Director
- 35+ years in management of international food manufacturing, including two
major pizza plants
Luca Magnani – Co-Founder and Director of Marketing & Sales
- 15+ years in Brand Marketing and Digital
Dan Einzig – Co-Founder and Branding Guru
- 20 years in UK Food and Beverage branding

10. Finance
We are seeking £430,000 seed funding in addition to our funds. The investment will
generate over 80% IRR and 16x equity return to the investors.
£280,000 will be used to cover the costs to open our initial production facility, our
first sales outlet in a prime location in or around the City of London and working
capital. Approximately 3 months later £150,000 will be used to open the second
outlet in a further nearby location.
No debt leverage has been assumed at this stage.
This business is eligible for SEIS and to date we have received verbal commitments in
excess of £200,000. We are currently discussing additional investments from angel
investors and will launch imminently a crowd-funding campaign.

11. Expansion and Exit
Once the business model with the first two outlets is validated, we will increase the
number of outlets organically.
We foresee potential for 12 outlets to be opened in 5 years without further cash
injections. However, we believe momentum should be maintained with further
capital injections to fuel explosive growth.
Ultimately, we aim at opening 100+ outlets in London alone, expanding through
franchising in the UK and overseas and selling to supermarkets.
The most likely exit strategies will be a trade sale or a buyout by a private equity
investor.

12. Expansion and Exit

13. www.pizzarossa.co
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