Former owner bails out Deep Pan Pizza

The Restaurant Group (TRG) has been forced to bail out the struggling Deep Pan Pizza company, despite selling off the business at the end of 2001.

It sold Deep Pan Pizza for £3.3m through a management buy-out led by then operations director Bill McTaggart.

It received £1m on completion of the deal with the rest due over a deferred period.

Since then, TRG has received a further £1.8m, leaving a balance of £500,000.

But despite a radical programme of closures and cost cutting, tough trading conditions during the latter half of this year saw the chain continuing to suffer.

As a result TRG has been forced to defer payment of outstanding rent and the remaining £500,000.

In return for agreeing to this, it has been granted an option to convert the £500,000 into Deep Pan Pizza shares.

Although the company said it had no current plans to do this, if it were to do so, it would mean it taking control of Deep Pan Pizza.

Away from Deep Pan, TRG said its current trading remained good, with like-for-like sales in the first 46 weeks up by 5% on the same period last year.

by Nic Paton

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