Five buyers eye up Perfect Pizza
Perfect Pizza (UK), one of the country’s leading home-delivery specialists, is up for sale.
Sources close to the company say that five potential buyers are interested in the business, which has nearly 200 outlets in the UK. All have insisted on confidentiality agreements, barring discussions on a possible purchase.
Perfect Pizza claims a 45m share of the 300m UK home-delivery pizza market.
The company’s managing director, Tony Sherriff, refuses to confirm or deny the story, stating only that Perfect Pizza has recently been bought by US company Laidlow.
Laidlow purchased Perfect Pizza when it acquired its owner, the Scott Holdings group, in the US in August. Since then, analysts have hinted that Laidlow would like to sell the home-delivery business. Others suggest that it would be a natural fit with PepsiCo’s Pizza Hut restaurants in the UK.
The news comes after the departure of Perfect Pizza’s head of marketing, Claire Potter (MW October 11). She is the second marketing chief to leave the company in the past three months. Marketing director Ian Dunstall left two months ago to join Bass’ Toby Restaurants as brands manager (MW August 2).
It is also understood that Perfect Pizza has put on hold its relationship with agency Marketing Drive until the future of the business is more certain.
