PizzaLuxe to open Shoreditch restaurant
Restaurateurs Paul Goodale (pictured) and Laura Pabon have secured a site in London's Shoreditch for their third PizzaLuxe restaurant.
The new site in Sclater Street, near Brick Lane, sits at the base of a new residential development and will be PizzaLuxe's biggest site so far with a 1,200 sq ft ground floor area and a 700 sq ft basement.
Set to open in the first quarter of 2015, it will seat 40 people in the main dining area, with another 45 around a circular counter, and will also have space for a ground-floor bar area and around 20 tables outside. The basement is expected to house another bar with a snug for around 20 people.
Goodale said that he and Pabon were currently working hard on the design for the site, which they hope to make slightly different to its two sister venues, and that they also expect to change the menu format slightly to offer more pizzas with premium toppings.
"It is the biggest site we have taken and Laura and I have been very keen on it for 18 months now," Goodale said. "I think there will be more high-end toppings on this menu because we think the area can take it - something we understand from when we did a pop-up The Brompton Club. We did some really high end pizzas in there and they worked really well. We firmly see the evenings and weekends as our biggest part of the week in this site."
PizzaLuxe's other two sites are in Westfield shopping centre in Stratford in east London, and at Trinity Kitchen in Leeds.
Goodale said he and Pabon were currently aiming to raise £1m through the EIS scheme to fund further expansion of the brand.
"We would like to move the business on faster than we can do through just organic growth. We were going to raise £500,000 through EIS, and we got EIS clearance recently, but we have already been able to fulfil the £500,000, which is why we are going to look for £1m instead.
"We have been really impressed with the feedback around PizzaLuxe. It has got three years of profitable trading behind it. I think people are quite captivated by the category and by making the ordinary extraordinary, which is obviously something that other businesses have achieved - such as Tom Byng has done with burgers at Byron."
Meanwhile, Goodale and business partner Daniel Gestetner continue to run Fred's Food Construction, a fast casual New York deli-diner concept with the support of supermarket chain Tesco.
The business already has two London sites at Tesco Osterley, and Tesco Philpot Lane, and has plans to open a third site.
