- Pizza Express is reportedly exploring a sale that would value the UK pizza group at up to £500m, with its owners working with bankers at Rothschild after receiving approaches from both industry bidders and investment firms. The business, whose owners include Bain Capital’s special situations unit and Cyrus Capital Partners, has also recently moved into the fried chicken market through a deal to bring US brand Houston Hot Chicken to the UK and reported flat sales of £440m in 2025, while EBITDA rose 6.3% to £53m.
- Market Place Food Hall has revealed the 10 traders that will occupy its new 5,000sq ft site at London Victoria Station when it opens on Friday, 16 October. The line-up will include Argentinian Grill, Hide & Greek, Inamo Sukoshi, Jollof Mama, Limin, Made in Puglia, SABA, Streat Latin, Thai House and The Duck Shed. Located in Victoria Place Shopping Centre, the food hall will seat 180 guests and feature a central bar serving cocktails and craft beer, as well as screens showing live sports and train departure information.
- Heard, the burger restaurant from two-Michelin-starred chef Jordan Bailey, will open its largest site to date in London’s Covent Garden this November. The two-storey flagship will feature Heard’s burger offering alongside a new downstairs dessert and cocktail concept. Burgers will include the signature The Heard, made with a double smash patty, jalapeño hot honey, Ogleshield cheese, white onion and secret sauce, alongside The Boring Burger and vegetarian Wild Umami. The site will also serve desserts including hot apple pie, brûlée cheesecake and milk soft serve, with customers able to customise ice cream sandwiches and sundaes.
- Paris-founded brasserie operator La Nouvelle Garde is planning a second London restaurant at The M Building on Oxford Street, following the July opening of Brasserie Olivia on Sloane Square. A premises licence application and recruitment advert point to a spring 2027 opening, with the group understood to have taken the 6,391sq ft ‘flagship’ restaurant unit at the upcoming mixed-use development. La Nouvelle Garde is currently recruiting a general manager for the site, described in the advert as its ‘second London opening’, with further UK restaurants already planned.
- The team behind South African-inspired restaurant Kudu will open Braai Bird, a wood-fired rotisserie chicken restaurant, on their former Kudu Grill site in Peckham this November. Chef and co-founder Patrick Williams will oversee a menu of wood-fired chicken, South African sauces and sharing sides, while creative director and co-founder Amy Corbin is working with designer Liga Piraga on the interiors. The opening will mark a return to Peckham for the pair, who opened Kudu on Queens Road in 2017.