Bain Capital and Cyrus Capital Partners have appointed Rothschild to explore a sale of Pizza Express, at a valuation reported at up to £500 million. Approaches have already come from trade bidders and investment firms. Any buyer takes on 370 restaurants in the UK and Ireland, which the company runs itself, and around 80 international sites, which it does not.
Pizza Express has been owned by Bain Capital’s special situations arm and Cyrus Capital Partners since the bondholder restructuring that followed its 2020 collapse into a company voluntary arrangement. Trading has recovered since: turnover of £440 million in 2025 against £442 million the year before, with adjusted EBITDA up 6.3% to £53 million, and a first quarter this year of £112 million, up 3.7%, on UK like-for-like growth of 5%.
The 80 sites a buyer does not operate
The part of the business least likely to lead the coverage is the part a franchise reader should look at first. Pizza Express runs its UK and Ireland restaurants itself, but its international estate is franchised, and the company says it has more than 20 years of experience in franchising and is actively looking for partners. It lists 12 markets outside the UK: Ireland, Cyprus, Gibraltar, Hong Kong, India, Indonesia, Kuwait, Macau, Singapore, Spain, Turkey and the UAE. A buyer is therefore acquiring an operating company and a franchisor at the same time, two businesses with different economics, as what a franchise is sets out.
Good to know
Two models in one business. The restaurants in Britain and Ireland are company-operated, so none of them is available to take on. The growth route Pizza Express publishes is international franchising, and the partners it recruits hold whole markets rather than single sites, the structure described in what a master franchise is.
Where the growth has actually come from
In 2025 the company opened seven restaurants in the UK and two in Hong Kong, and added 12 franchised restaurants across India, Saudi Arabia, Singapore, Indonesia and Turkey, taking the franchise portfolio to around 90 sites by the year end. It has also been buying: the US brand Houston Hot Chicken arrives in Stevenage this autumn and at the Brunswick Centre in Bloomsbury in winter, and a first quick-service format opened in Brixton earlier this year, moving the group into the segment covered by the fast food franchises recruiting in the UK.
Why owners sell into a recovery
The timing follows the pattern of a restructuring fund rather than a trade owner. Bain and Cyrus came in through the debt, and a sale at a point of improving EBITDA and positive like-for-likes is when that position is worth most. A price of up to £500 million against £53 million of adjusted EBITDA sets the multiple the market is being asked to accept, which is the number rival bidders will be testing rather than the headline.
What happens next
Nothing is agreed. Exploring a sale is not running one, and processes at this size are abandoned as often as they complete. The signals worth following are whether a formal process opens, whether the bidders are trade or financial, and what any buyer says about the international estate, because a trade buyer with its own franchise network would treat those 80 sites very differently from a fund, and what a new owner can change for existing partners is fixed by the franchise agreement rather than by the transaction. Pizza Express has not commented on the report.
Operators looking for a brand that recruits single-site partners in the UK can compare published terms across the UK franchise directory.
