PizzaExpress is a restaurant group with over 400 restaurants across the United Kingdom and 40 overseas in Europe, Hong Kong, India and the Middle East. It was founded in 1965 by Peter Boizot.
PizzaExpress specialises in pizza. Signature dishes include its dough balls. It now also has pasta. In each PizzaExpress every pizza is handmade, prepared in each restaurant’s open kitchen. A special Welsh regional pizza featuring laverbread and created by local Welsh chef Cellan Price was run in a limited number of restaurants in Wales during 2005. PizzaExpress introduced the lighter pizza ‘Leggera’, the first pizza range on the high street that contains around 500 calories. In 2008, PizzaExpress started a Guest Chef Series with chef Theo Randall, of Theo Randall at InterContinental London, creating exclusive dishes for its menu.Francesco Mazzei, of L’Anima, came on board in 2010 to develop a menu inspired by the cuisine of Calabria. The celebrity chef series continued in 2012 with the introduction of two pizzas made by television cook Valentine Warner. Warner introduced the fennel and salami pizza and the Puttanesca pizza.
July 2014 - Pizza Express has been bought for £900m by a Chinese firm which plans to roll out the British restaurant chain in the world's most populous country. Hony Capital won an auction process ahead of Citic, another Chinese investment group, and four other private equity firms in what is the biggest European restaurant sector deal in the last five years.