Pizza Express: 26 stores, reopened overnight

The challenge

Pizza Express ran a nationwide refurbishment programme, and Ascent Onsite Group was appointed across a 26-store framework to bring each site back to trading standard. Every restaurant came out of its fit-out looking finished but not ready to serve food: construction dust on every ledge, adhesive and paint marks on the floors, and a kitchen and washrooms needing sanitising to hospitality standard before a single cover could be sold. The team worked overnight at each site, one restaurant at a time, so every store could open to customers the following morning.

With 26 stores on the framework spread across the country, reopening dates fell on different days at every site and none of them could slip. Each restaurant needed the same overnight turnaround: the team went in after close, worked through the night, and had the site food-safe and customer-ready before the doors opened again the next morning. Fine construction dust that settles if the work is rushed, delicate new finishes that mark easily, and the kitchen and washrooms, the highest hygiene risk in any restaurant, all had to be brought up to standard inside that single overnight window, every time, at a different site and on a different date.

Our approach

We deployed an experienced crew certified to Health, Hygiene and CSCS standards and worked each site top down so nothing settled twice. High-level dust was drawn off ledges, ductwork and light fittings using Space-Vac systems, which reach elevated surfaces without towers or scaffold. Floors were stripped of construction residue and polished, and new finishes were protected throughout using microfibre cloths and low-toxicity products rather than harsh chemicals that could damage them.

The kitchen was sanitised as a priority at every store, with stainless steel, food preparation surfaces and equipment cleaned to a standard the restaurant could open on. Washrooms and the dining area were then brought up to the same finish. Because the model repeated across 26 different sites on 26 different dates, each overnight visit was scheduled, resourced and signed off independently, with the same standard held whether it was the first store on the framework or the last.

The result

All 26 stores on the framework were handed back spotless and ready to trade the following morning, with no reopening missed. Kitchen and washrooms met the hygiene standard front of house needed at every site, construction dust and debris were gone, and new finishes came through each clean undamaged. Pizza Express reopened every restaurant on schedule with no loss of trading days, proving the same overnight turnaround could be repeated reliably up and down the country.