The pizza chain Franco Manca announced this week it is shutting 16 of its 70 UK restaurants as part of a major restructuring.
Neither the Putney High Street branch nor the Southfields branch is among those earmarked for closure, according to the hospitality trade title MCA, which reported the internally communicated site list on Thursday.
Both branches were trading normally as of Thursday, with their pages live on the Franco Manca website. We spoke to the manager of the Southfields branch who told us to call Franco Manca HQ. They were even less forthcoming. An official announcement on which branches will close is expected in a few weeks.
It is a very difficult market for restaurants and pubs at the moment so the rule for Putney residents is the same as always: use it or lose it. If our local establishments don’t get the business, they will struggle to survive.
The closures are a significant cull for a chain that built its reputation on sourdough pizza and affordable prices. The London sites going include the original Brixton restaurant (opened in a market stall in 2008, where the whole thing started) along with Battersea, Broadway Market, Chiswick, Kilburn, New Oxford Street, Stoke Newington and Tottenham Court Road. Eight regional branches are also closing: Bishop’s Stortford, Bromley, Cheltenham, Didsbury, Glasgow, Hove, Lincoln and Plymouth.
VAT and business rates blame
Franco Manca’s parent company Fulham Shore, which also owns The Real Greek, blamed the closures on rising national insurance and living wage costs, a lack of business rates relief, and what CEO Marcel Khan called “disproportionately high VAT in the UK compared with Europe.”
A company voluntary arrangement (a formal restructuring process that lets a company negotiate with creditors while continuing to trade) does not mean the whole chain is shutting. Fulham Shore has not officially confirmed which sites will close; the creditor vote is expected within weeks, at which point the final list becomes public.
The restructuring had been in preparation for longer than this week’s announcement suggests. Companies House filings show both Franco Manca operating companies registered new secured financing charges in March, five weeks before the public announcement. The money almost certainly funded the restructuring process itself. The company was already spending on its own fix before anyone outside knew it needed one.
Until then, both local branches remain open. For Putney High Street, it is a rare piece of good news after a difficult spring. Southfields, too, has had its own recent run of openings and closings on Wimbledon Park Road.
We will update this story if the final CVA list changes anything for either local branch.
