Pizza Pilgrims lands in Germany, targets 50 restaurants
The Neapolitan chain opens in Schwabing on 2 November, backed by German group L'Osteria, which bought a majority stake last year and wants dozens more sites.
Pizza Pilgrims opens its first German restaurant on 2 November in Munich, the opening shot in a plan for up to 50 sites across the country.
The London-founded Neapolitan chain takes over a site at Leopoldstraße 56 in Schwabing, the trade title Tageskarte reported on 15 October. A second Munich restaurant, in the Tal district, follows in January 2027. Pizza Pilgrims has not set a timeline for the cities after that, beyond saying more will come.
A German group buys into the brand
A British pizza chain chasing a German parent company's ambitions, one Munich oven at a time.
The expansion runs through L'Osteria, the Nuremberg-founded Italian casual-dining group that bought a majority stake in Pizza Pilgrims in August 2025 for an undisclosed sum. L'Osteria operates more than 200 restaurants across ten European countries, including Austria, Switzerland and France, and already runs two sites of its own in the UK, in Bristol and Southampton.
"Pizza Pilgrims is a strong, successful brand with a clear Italian profile and an excellent team," said Jacek Trybuchowski, L'Osteria's chief executive, when the deal was announced. Founders Thom and James Elliot called it a "one plus one equals three" partnership and stayed on; Gavin Smith and Sophie Gilchriest were promoted to chief executive and chief financial officer of Pizza Pilgrims itself.
L'Osteria is backed in turn by the investment firm McWin, which took its own majority stake in the group in 2023 and also owns Gail's and Big Mamma. The deal fits a pattern of casual-dining chains consolidating under a handful of private equity-backed holding groups, the same logic behind TSG Consumer's investment in Los Tacos No. 1 earlier this year.
Dough fermented twice, flour from Naples
Pizza Pilgrims makes its dough with "00" flour from the Caputo mill in Naples, fermented twice over 72 hours, and tops it with tomatoes from Solana and mozzarella delivered weekly. The chain placed sixth in the 2025 ranking of the World's Top Artisan Pizza Chains.
Brothers Thom and James Elliot founded the company in 2012 after training in Naples and driving a three-wheeled Piaggio Ape roughly 4,500km back to London, where they first sold pizza from a stall at Berwick Street Market in Soho. The chain had 25 UK restaurants when L'Osteria took its stake.
Munich, fresh from its own debate over who actually shows up for Oktoberfest, now gets first look at whether the format travels. Fifty German openings is the stated ambition; nobody involved has said how fast.
