Pizza Express Offers Free Doughballs to at U.K. Restaurants | Eater London

"A once-ubiquitous midmarket Italian restaurant chain, long associated with blue-and-white branding, dough balls and casual dishes like the so-called 'Sloppy Guiseppes', is planning to reopen 150 restaurants by 6 August and is using free dough balls with every main course and participation in the government's 'eat out to help out' voucher scheme to entice diners. That marketing push recalls the chain's history of heavy discounting, which helped make it omnipresent in the 1990s and early 2000s but also eroded margins; coupled with repeated private-equity buyouts, those practices have left the business heavily leveraged. Its liabilities sit at roughly £1.1 billion, including about £450 million in loans from current owner Hony Capital, and critics say layers of private-equity debt and fading reputation have turned the group into a ticking time bomb. Having survived longer without major restructuring than some of its Italian peers, it still faces reports it could close around 75 of its roughly 470 restaurants, and observers argue that free dough balls and reopening a third of the estate feel like a temporary patch on a far deeper financial wound." - James Hansen