CCR puts lid on Deep Pan Pizza

By Angela Frewin

City Centre Restaurants (CCR) is to ditch Deep Pan Pizza, following the chain's disappointing performance last year.

Overall like-for-like sales at CCR were 2% higher than in 1996, but without Deep Pan Pizza the improvement was 6%.

This was despite steps taken to tackle problems at the 89-strong pizza chain: bringing in a new management team, improving pizza quality, dropping non-pizza options, and reducing over-high prices.

CCR will keep the 35 Deep Pan Pizza outlets sited in leisure parks, but plans to rename them and decorate them in a more Italian style. It feels the name suggests thick crust pizzas, when consumers prefer thin crust.

The company has received a surprise offer for its 54 high street outlets, from an unnamed bidder, and may take this route if it can achieve the book value of £16.5m. But it would prefer to convert some sites into Caffe Uno, Garfunkels, or the new pizza brand, sell some sites, and not renew leases on others.

Otherwise, CCR had a good year, boosting pre-tax profits by 12% to £17m on turnover 25% higher at £166m.

CCR opened 51 new restaurants last year, and plans a similar expansion this year, including a new Chinese-style chain, tentatively named Rickshaws. The company currently operates 281 restaurants.

Main targets for growth are Caffe Uno, Frankie & Benny's and Chiquita, as well as newcomers Est Est Est and Wok Wok. Despite improved performance, no more Nachos restaurants are expected this year. The 22 OK Diners roadside restaurants showed a mixed performance and are being refurbished to attract locals as well as motorists.