A London-based fresh pasta specialist is set to open 100 new stores across the UK, including three in the capital, creating over a thousand new jobs.
Pasta Evangelists, which prides itself on bringing the experience of freshly made Italian pasta to people’s homes, is looking for franchise partners as it seeks to open sites up and down the country, creating around 1,500 new jobs.
The company is looking at potential locations in the south of England, the Midlands and Scotland, Hospitality and Catering News reported.
It currently operates eight sites, including Greenwich, Guildford and Manchester Airport and plans to open three more in London in the coming weeks.
It plans to invest £30million in its new restaurants — with roughly half earmarked for converting its “dark kitchens” — food preparation hubs designed to fulfil delivery and takeaway orders quickly.
Finn Lagun, co-founder of Pasta Evangelists told The Times: “If you are just doing delivery only you can obviously only be making delivery-only cash.
“But if you dine in as well, you get the dine-in cash, alcohol sales and offer our events like pasta-making experiences, which are very high margin.”
Pasta Evangelists opened its first restaurant in Harrods Dining Hall in 2021, the same year the company sold a £40million stake to Barilla Group, which is the world’s largest pasta producer.
The company is also looking to develop a ‘Pasta Apprenticeship’ scheme to attract new staff and help strengthen its current workforce’s skills.
Chancellor Rachel Reeves welcomed Pasta Evangelists’ plans and described it as “another vote of confidence in the UK”.
She went on to say that this type of investment “demonstrates the dynamism and resilience” of British businesses.
Speaking to The Standard previously, founder Alessandro Savelli said the business idea came from his passion for Italian food and love of cooking.
“It had to be something I liked, because my previous company wasn’t something I was passionate about and, as cheesy as it sounds, I am Italian, I have Italian food every day, including pasta, I lived there for 20 years, and I’ve cooked since I was 14,” he said.
“This was also about seeing a business opportunity. I noticed that there were several waves of improvement in almost every single food and beverage sector - for burgers, pizzas, coffee and so on - uplifting the products, freshness and branding, except not for pasta.
“In supermarkets, the product hadn’t evolved since the Sacla pesto days yet now people want to eat fresh and seasonal things.
“So with this I wanted to try to bring Italianita, which means Italian-ness - doing things as an Italian would - to London, by making and delivering extremely fresh products.”
