Santa Maria pizza restaurant to double up
The 70-cover restaurant will open between the King’s Road, Fulham Road, and Stamford Bridge next February allowing owners Pasquale Chionchio and Angelo Ambrosio to reach a wider customer base.
Chionchio and Ambrosio told BigHospitality they were looking forward to taking their simple pizza at affordable prices concept to site larger than the original and to a new location.
“It's frustrating having a small place where you can't make a whole family happy,” they said. “In the Chelsea site your 12 people leaving do will finally be possible. Also, we will definitely have space to improve our customer service, something that we'd always wanted to do even better, but we have never managed to.
“We didn't want to go too far from Ealing but we definitely wanted to get closer to Central London, so this spot was the right compromise. Plus the catchment area is huge, being surrounded by very populated areas. Another point in our favour was the quite good public transport connections, and last but not least the area is populated by many Italians, French and Americans - the perfect foreign demographics for what we do."
Expansion
Acquiring the Chelsea site is part of wider expansion plans for the business, but Chionchio and Ambrosio said growth plans would never compromise the quality of their product.
"We are aiming on growing, of course. Everybody would love a Santa Maria pizzeria on their own doorstep," they said.
"But has to be an organic growth, a natural one. We will never be the kind of business where profits and margins will be more important than our reputation.
"We have been meticulous at every single stage in the process, we have never taken short cuts when it comes to our food and our ingredients, we have never rested on our laurels and have always strived to improve our pizza every single day."
