Visionary known as ‘Mr Pizza’
PETER Boizot was a man whose passions in life fuelled great business and personal success – and Britain’s love affair with the pizza. His fond memories of enjoying a slice of this peasant food in Florence while working as an au pair in his teens, led to him buying a struggling Italian restaurant in London’s West End from film director Mario Zampi for £100 in 1965.
He took on £14,000 of debts, imported a £600 pizza oven and a chef from Italy and created a casual dining chain that revolutionised the way we eat out.
It was a mark of the man that the oven was too big for the door so he knocked the wall down to make it fit.
PizzaExpress now has more than 470 outlets in the UK and many more abroad. While targeting the mass market, Boizot was committed to excellence and brought his love of culture to his chain.
He enlisted the help of friend and artist Enzo Apicella to develop the brand’s look and design branches so they had an individual style. He called them “a necklace of individual gems”.
Boizot’s deep passion for music saw him start PizzaExpress Jazz Club in 1969, with artists including Ella Fitzgerald and Amy Winehouse among those to perform.
Born in Peterborough, he was head boy and a chorister at The King’s School and studied history at St Catharine’s College in Cambridge, before spending 10 years working abroad.
Boizot taught English in Paris, worked for Nestlé in the publicity department and also on the photo desk at Associated Press in Rome.
It was these European adventures that inspired his varied interests and entrepreneurial spirit.
“I’d like to think that all things in my life are concerned with love,” he once said.
Boizot was deeply committed to helping others, with a philanthropic approach to capitalism.
He created the Veneziana pizza in 1975 to help the Venice in Peril Fund, donating a percentage of every sale ever since. The contribution stands at £2million and counting.
He was a strict vegetarian from the age of six and the topping consisted of pine kernels, red onions, baby capers, black olives, sultanas, mozzarella and tomato, although his personal favourite was a quattro formaggi.
Sport was another big part of his life and he stepped in to save Peterborough United Football Club from collapse in 1997 and played a major role in the team’s promotion from the Third Division in 2000, dancing on the Wembley turf in celebration.
Boizot reduced his personal commitments in 2003 after losing millions of pounds bankrolling the club nicknamed The Posh.
But former club staff said he loved his home town, also owning the Broadway Theatre and Great Northern Hotel for a time and standing unsuccessfully as a Liberal candidate for Peterborough in both 1974 general elections.
Making money wasn’t his priority, as demonstrated when he turned down a £200,000 shirt sponsorship deal because he only wanted the team emblem visible, not a company logo.
Boizot floated PizzaExpress on the London Stock Exchange in 1993 and later sold his shares, moving from the role of managing director to chairman and then president.
He had previously received an MBE in 1986 and Commendatore dell’ordine al Merito della Repubblica Italiana in 1996 for services to the State of Italy.
In his autobiography Mr Pizza And All That Jazz in 2016, he said: “I’ve never had a business mantra. I just follow what I am passionate about.”
He is survived by his sister, Clementine Allen.