The challenge
Few menus in UK hospitality carry as much expectation as a Pizza Express seasonal launch.
The Christmas menu in particular has to deliver dishes worth talking about, year after year, for one of the country’s most familiar restaurant names.
Pizza Express commissioned us for a menu innovation sprint focused on two moments: Christmas 2024 and the September seasonal launch. Our task was to develop hero dishes grounded in trend relevance while staying true to the brand’s positioning and its core customer. Novelty that ignores who you are is noise; the win is newness that feels unmistakably Pizza Express.
What we did
An innovation sprint consisting of concept ideation, menu development and briefing specifications for supplier partners.
How we did it
We split the sprint into two phases, with Christmas 2024 taking priority. Our team began with a trends deep dive, drawing on multiple sources to produce a shortlist of trends we judged genuinely relevant to the brand, rather than everything happening in food. From there we moved into rapid ideation, building a concept shortlist before prioritising the strongest dishes for full development in the kitchen.
Dishes earn their place by being eaten, not described, so we showcased the developed menu at a tasting with senior stakeholders. With the menu agreed, we prepared all the handover documents and supplier briefing sheets, turning creative concepts into specifications that supplier partners could pick up and run with.
We then repeated the process for the September launch, this time with a focus on autumnal dishes. Inspiration came from across the Atlantic, tapping into the content and energy around Fall and Halloween in the USA, where autumn is treated as a food season in its own right, and translating that excitement into dishes that fit a UK casual dining menu.
The work did not stop at handover. We have since worked directly with some of the recipients of our manufacturing briefs, supporting them in commercialising products for Christmas 2024 and closing the loop between concept and what actually reaches the table.
What it delivered
Two seasonal menus of trend-led hero dishes, developed, tasted, approved and fully specified for supplier partners. All menu items went live in 2024 within their selected windows, taking the work the whole way from trends shortlist to dishes served in restaurants nationwide. The supplier briefing materials did their job too, with our team supporting commercialisation on the manufacturing side to keep quality true to the original concepts.
Restaurant work like this is a particular joy for our team. The feedback loop is short, the audience is real, and there is nothing quite like seeing a dish you ideated on a flipchart being ordered at the next table. It also shows the value of a partner who understands both sides of hospitality innovation: the creative work of finding what is next, and the unglamorous, essential craft of briefing it through suppliers so it lands on plates exactly as imagined.
View more case studies
-
Oscar Mayer
Oscar Mayer needed category understanding in convenience and discount channels that could drive retailer conversations. FIS Group delivered a multi-phase programme combining quantitative, qualitative and innovation expertise, turning research into a commercial asset at the negotiating table.
-
Superkeen
Superkeen needed rapid development of allergen-free products to support their expansion beyond cereals. FIS Group delivered a fast-paced sprint across two categories – nut butter concepts and tigernut cereal bars – producing signed-off gate zero samples meeting strict AIP requirements, ready for manufacturing briefs.
-
Mars
Mars needed a true research partner to decode consumer meal behaviour across three markets. FIS Group delivered a bespoke Meal Moments programme combining in-the-moment diary capture, qualitative exploration and strategic workshop facilitation – turning occasion-level data into immediate commercial direction.
Got a brief? Let’s talk.
Tell us what you are working on. We will tell you straight whether we can help, what the right approach looks like, and how quickly we can move. No long discovery dance, no qualifying call before the qualifying call.