@pizza, Grand Central Birmingham
The second site for the brand, the first being Edinburgh, @pizza in Birmingham opened recently in Grand Central, the shopping centre and food court at Birmingham New Street station.
Designed by Fusion By Design, the pizza restaurant will feature urban materials and carries the brand’s monochrome theme across to this site. There’s also an open kitchen so customers can watch the pizza chefs in action and their food being cooked.
The restaurant offers a fast and unique way to order pizza; diners can either select their own toppings or choose from one of @pizza’s favourite recommendations, for example, the best-selling Heartbreaker featuring a Roquito pepper sauce base with Scottish mozzarella, red onion, pepperoni Italian sausage, and fresh jalapeño, rosemary and sriracha sauce. As well as a slow proved sourdough base, @pizza offers gluten-free options, plus a range of dessert pizzas and Menodiciotto gelato. All pizzas cost just £9.95 and ingredients are carefully sourced from the UK and Italy to guarantee great taste. Drinks include craft sodas that use sustainable cane sugar, Italian wines, cocktails, and a selection of local beers. The @pizza packaging, which includes pizza boxes and soda cups, is made from vegetables and is 100% compostable – in-line with the company’s ongoing commitment to sustainability.
Chris Illingworth of Fusion By Design who worked on the project said:
“Within the Birmingham site, the design creates an atmospheric environment with a visually striking and dynamic interior to complement the cool background music. The concept is a development of the Edinburgh site, led by using different textures and materials, illuminated in different and interesting ways. We created the site-specific concept, to capture people’s attention; such a bold and striking interior is something new and different for Grand Central, echoing the new and different product & service @Pizza offer the city of Birmingham. The unit itself is centrally located within the main food court area, and the main thing customers will see is the dynamic lighting, it’s a very different restaurant to anything else there.
“To the front of the space we’ve got industrial mesh to create a cage to hold graphics behind it, illuminated in a discreet and indirect way. A double LED neon @pizza sign also wraps up a wall and onto the ceiling, so it’s multipurpose, a signage point but a source of illumination as well. LED zigzags at high level also guide the customers on a journey through the small space to the jet black counter.”
Chris added:
“The challenges of this project were that it was very small space, but the beauty of @pizza’s operations means that they don’t need much back of house equipment, everything is on show. Everything is contained in a very small footprint.”
Bhasker Dhir, co-founder and chief operating officer at @pizza, said:
“Since launching in Edinburgh in 2017, we’ve received a fantastic response from pizza-lovers and are proud to be rated number one out of 155 pizza restaurants in the city on TripAdvisor.
“Birmingham is the perfect location for our next site – a bustling city with a huge appetite for diverse, quality food. Grand Central, with its significant footfall and ideal central location, is a fantastic opportunity for us and we’re looking forward to introducing a new and exciting dining option to the city.”
Opening hours are 11am-10pm. For more information visit www.atpizza.com/birmingham, or like @pizza on Instagram, Twitter and Facebook.
