Prezzo Brand Guidelines: A 2000 London Opening, Two Restructurings & the Prezzo Italian Name

A London opening and a fast-growing estate.

Prezzo opened its first restaurant on New Oxford Street, London, in November 2000, according to English Wikipedia, which names Jonathan Kaye as the founder who opened it and later ran the company as chief executive. The Guardian repeated the 2000 start in central London in April 2023. The name is the Italian word for “price,” English Wikipedia notes. The chain trades through a company called Brava Trading Limited, the same source says, and it has also worked in Ireland, where its first restaurant opened in February 2016.

The early estate grew quickly. English Wikipedia says the chain often turned older buildings of architectural interest into restaurants, citing a former cinema in Beaconsfield, Buckinghamshire, as one example. By early 2018 Prezzo had about 300 UK branches and a Tex-Mex offshoot called Chimichanga, The Guardian reported on 28 February 2018. At that point the chain was owned by the US private equity group TPG Capital; English Wikipedia dates the TPG takeover to 2015, when the founder moved to a non-executive role.

Growth on that scale did not last. In the same February 2018 report, The Guardian said Prezzo would ask creditors to approve a company voluntary arrangement under which landlords would accept rent reductions, with around a third of the branches, including every Chimichanga, likely to close. The newspaper placed the move among several restaurant restructurings that year, after similar arrangements at the burger chain Byron and at Jamie’s Italian, and said the chain still had a workforce of about 4,500 in the UK. A High Court judgment of July 2023 later set out the result: the arrangement was proposed on 23 March 2018, the estate fell from 300 sites to 209, three other restaurant brands then run by the business were closed, and a further 23 closures took the number of operating restaurants to 186.

Cain International and a court-sanctioned plan.

Ownership changed in late 2020, when the private property investor Cain International bought the chain from TPG Capital, The Guardian reported in April 2023. The High Court judgment of 5 July 2023 records how the purchase was done: on 10 February 2021 a new company, Prezzo Trading, acquired the business and assets of the previous operator in a pre-pack administration sale, funded by secured loan notes held mainly by its shareholders. Shortly after the purchase Prezzo closed 22 restaurants, The Guardian said.

A second round of cuts came in 2023. On 24 April that year Prezzo said it was closing 46 restaurants across England and Scotland, The Guardian reported, and blamed higher costs. The chain said its remaining sites would be away from hard-pressed high streets, in shopping centres, retail parks, tourist destinations and travel hubs, and the closures left it with about 97 restaurants. The court judgment counts 47 loss-making sites in the same exercise.

The parent company, Prezzo Investco, then sought a restructuring plan under Part 26A of the Companies Act 2006. HMRC, a substantial creditor, opposed it as unfair. On 5 July 2023 the High Court sanctioned the plan, including the compromise of the HMRC debt, finding that the plan was fair and that the company had not been trading at HMRC’s expense. The judgment also describes the structure behind the restaurants: Prezzo Investco has one wholly owned subsidiary, Prezzo Trading, which runs the chain under the Prezzo name, and since February 2021 the business had relied on loan-note funding from its shareholders for its day-to-day operations.

Italian chains on the British high street.

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 2025 rename, softer rooms and a new group name.

The current look dates from 1 May 2025, when Prezzo marked its 25th birthday by renaming itself Prezzo Italian, Restaurant Online reported that day. The 96-restaurant group, still backed by Cain International, opened its first restaurant under the new name on Kensington High Street in London, with Cambridge, King’s Lynn, Chelmsford and Aberdeen next in line. The new interiors were designed by the studio Surface-id, and the change followed ASK, which became ASK Italian in 2010, the same report noted.

In September 2025 the holding company was renamed Brava Hospitality Group, with Prezzo Italian as its flagship brand, Restaurant Online reported on 24 September 2025. The refurbishment programme described there brings a softer colour palette with new tables, chairs, crockery, drinkware and artwork; the group had 95 restaurants at the time. English Wikipedia adds that new restaurants opened in Edinburgh and Rugby in August and September 2025. By January 2026 Restaurant Online reported 12 refurbished restaurants and a core group of 84 Prezzo Italian sites, and said Brava had signed a franchise deal late in 2025 to bring Jamie’s Italian back to the UK. In June 2026 the same title reported that Brava was rolling out Pronto Pasta, a delivery-only pasta brand cooked in about 20 Prezzo Italian kitchens and sold only through Deliveroo, with dishes such as carbonara and bolognese and sides of garlic bread. The idea was first raised in early 2024 as a grab-and-go counter for railway stations and other travel hubs, the report said, but the group now plans to keep it as a virtual brand. The chain’s website now promotes Club Prezzo, a loyalty app.

For a design guide, Prezzo shows a chain that changed its name, rooms and tableware after two rounds of restructuring; compare Pizza Express and ASK Italian, which added “Italian” to its own name in 2010. For this guide we use terracotta, olive and parmesan cream with a serif, an unofficial interpretation; no product or logo is reproduced.

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