Franco Manca Brand Guidelines: The 2008 Brixton Market Sourdough Pizzeria

A pizzeria taken over and renamed in 2008.

Franco Manca opened in Brixton Market, south London, in 2008. The company tells the story on its own site: a man called Franco, who had founded a pizzeria in the market in 1986, asked his friend Giuseppe Mascoli whether he wanted to take it over. Mascoli and his friend Bridget Hugo, an artisan baker, did so and renamed it Franco Manca, which the company translates from Italian as “Franco is missing.”

The company says the pair built their own oven and developed a slow-rising sourdough, made from a starter dating from the 18th century that came from near Mascoli’s home city of Naples, and kept to a short menu in the Neapolitan tradition. As queues grew, it says, they opened a second pizzeria in Chiswick, then a third. City A.M., reporting in April 2023, also dated the launch to 2008 in Brixton Market and described the brand as known for serving pizza on sourdough bread.

The name is the brand’s plainest design decision. It keeps the previous owner in the sign rather than replacing him, and it reads as Italian without explaining itself; the company’s own pages still begin the history with Franco and the 1986 pizzeria before Mascoli and Hugo arrive.

Sourcing is the other half of the story the company tells. It says the dough ferments for at least 24 hours every day and is made with flour from Wildfarmed; that its red and yellow piennolo tomatoes come from the area around Vesuvius; that its coffee is roasted by the Frasi family in Verona; and that its wines are always Italian. These are the company’s descriptions of its own menu, given here as such.

From a market stall to a listed group, then to Toridoll.

The business grew with outside help. By February 2015 MCA was describing Franco Manca as the pizza chain led by David Page and Giuseppe Mascoli, and reported that it was in talks about a site in Bath as part of a move beyond London. Page was the former franchisee who had led Pizza Express after its 1993 flotation, according to an MCA profile published in 2018.

In March 2015 the London-listed company The Fulham Shore, which already owned The Real Greek restaurants, conditionally agreed to buy what MCA then called the “10-strong” Franco Manca chain; on 21 April 2015 MCA reported that the Fulham Shore board had agreed the acquisition. A few months later MCA was calling Fulham Shore “the David Page-led listed company” and reporting plans to open more of both brands.

The next sale came in 2023. On 5 April 2023 City A.M. reported that Fulham Shore had agreed to be bought by Toridoll Holdings, a Tokyo-listed company that already ran the Marugame Udon and Wok to Walk chains in London. Fulham Shore then had 97 restaurants across its brands, the paper said, and Franco Manca had over 70 sites across the UK and a trade deal with Tesco.

In July 2023 The Caterer reported that Toridoll had completed the acquisition the previous week, taking on 27 Real Greek and 70 Franco Manca restaurants. Toridoll, founded in 1990, said it wanted to expand Franco Manca in the UK and Europe, through its own restaurants and through franchising, and had noted demand for pizza in Hong Kong. Its chief executive told the paper that Toridoll “fell in love” with Franco Manca. The paper added that Toridoll had entered Europe in 2020 through a joint venture with the investment firm Capdesia to bring Marugame Udon to the region, and had opened 11 Marugame Udon sites in London and Reading since 2021, so Franco Manca joined an existing UK business rather than starting one.

How British Italian chains present themselves.

Britain’s Italian restaurant chains tend to tell their stories through a room and an oven. Pizza Express traces itself to a single pizzeria on Wardour Street in Soho, opened in 1965 with an oven brought from Italy, according to accounts in MCA and Restaurant Online in 2018. Franco Manca, which began in Brixton Market in 2008, says its founders built their own oven there before opening anywhere else.

Menus and naming are usually plain. Dishes are listed by ingredient and region rather than by invented brand names, and some chains publish where those ingredients come from: Franco Manca’s pages run through its flour, tomatoes, cheeses and coffee one by one. Restaurant names lean on a founder, a place or a simple description; Franco Manca, the company says, means “Franco is missing,” after the man who ran the market pizzeria before it.

The corporate pages tell a second story, about owners. Many of these chains have passed between founders, stock-market listings and investment firms. In 2014 City A.M. noted that the private equity firm Cinven’s Gondola group ran Pizza Express alongside Zizzi and ASK Italian; Franco Manca was bought by the listed group Fulham Shore in 2015, and Fulham Shore by the Tokyo-listed Toridoll in 2023.

Restructurings are part of that record too. Company voluntary arrangements, which let a business close restaurants and reset its leases with creditors’ approval, were used by Pizza Express in 2020 and announced by Franco Manca’s owner in 2026, according to trade press reports. Each guide in this series sets out what can be checked about a chain, who founded it, who owns it and what has changed, and marks what rests on the company’s own word.

A smaller estate after the 2026 restructuring.

In April 2026 Fulham Shore announced a plan to close 16 Franco Manca restaurants, about a fifth of the estate, through a company voluntary arrangement, The Caterer reported; the chief executive of Fulham Shore put the decision down to rising costs, including National Insurance, the National Living Wage, business rates and VAT. Food Bible, reporting the same plan on 23 April 2026, said Fulham Shore had named the original Brixton restaurant among the sites to close, with others in Cheltenham, Glasgow, Hove and Plymouth.

The company’s own pages still open the history in Brixton Market, under the heading “Back to Brixton,” while the room itself is on the closure list. The chain continues to trade under Fulham Shore, which Food Bible described in April 2026 as the operator of the business, sold with Franco Manca to Toridoll in 2023.

The design language the company publishes stays close to its food. Its pages are built around ingredients and suppliers rather than restaurant interiors, with short headings such as “Small farms. Big taste.” repeated over each ingredient, from the dough and the cheeses to the tomatoes, the coffee and the homemade lemonade.

For a design guide, Franco Manca shows how a restaurant name and a founding place can carry a chain through two changes of owner. Compare Pizza Express, the Soho chain that David Page ran before Franco Manca, and Pizza Hut, the American pizza chain. For this guide we use a basil green, a volcanic charcoal and a crust brown with a serif, an unofficial interpretation; no product or logo is reproduced.

Keep Franco Manca’s identity on hand — save it to a board in the Made Good inspiration library.