@Pizza looks to raise £1m to tuck into larger slice of Scottish market

The Scottish entrepreneur behind a pizza company with a branch in Edinburgh has unveiled plans to raise a seven-figure sum by crowdfunding as it looks to open more branches north of the Border.

Lyle cites @Pizza’s aim of having three to five restaurants in a city. Picture: contributed.

@Pizza is owned by venture capital veteran Rupert Lyle, and at the end of 2017 it opened its first branch in Edinburgh’s West End, where it has 12 staff, now complemented by a second in Birmingham.

Glaswegian Lyle told The Scotsman that the business is aiming to launch a crowdfunding campaign in mid to late April, seeking (“coronavirus permitting”) to raise around £1 million via Crowdcube as it looks to add two sites in Edinburgh – on the Royal Mile and in Edinburgh St James. It aims to reach five in the city and then look at Glasgow.

“It’s about getting a really strong, robust financial base in place that we can expand from… what we want to do now is raise enough money that we can basically have a continual rollout programme,” he said of the fundraiser.

Lyle said launching the company followed his investing in many early-stage businesses.

He said the aim is to provide quality, value for money and choice – @Pizza says it offers more than 64,000 topping combinations, with pizzas cooked in under two minutes.

It also has a strong focus on social responsibility – for example working with Edinburgh-based plant-based compostable foodservice packaging specialist Vegware.

Regarding @Pizza’s expansion strategy, Lyle said: “Ultimately, we want to develop ‘clusters’ – and that's ‘clusters’ of between three and five restaurants in a city.”

Edinburgh will be its first “cluster,” having agreed to rent a site on the Royal Mile. “Hopefully, we'll get cracking on the fit-out of that some time in the first half of the year.” Secondly, it has been signed up as the only pizza operator at Edinburgh St James.

It is also looking to grow its presence from its Birmingham site, “and build a network of regional clusters”.

As for the impact of coronavirus, he said the whole leisure industry has “got to pull together and make sure we stand together and see this thing through... if you've got a good enough vision, then all your stakeholders will work with you”.