My Big Decision: Luke Johnson on taking over Pizza Express

Monday, December 06, 2010 | Posted by: Fiona Cullinan
Categories: My big decision | Tags: business, entrepreneurs, entrepreneur, risk, retail, Luke Johnson, My Big Decision, food, franchise, Pizza Express, takeover, restaurant

Like many serial entrepreneurs, Luke Johnson believes in getting off your behind, facing down the risks and rising to a challenge. Never more so than in 1992, when he was living on an overdraft in order to help finance a reverse takeover of Pizza Express. It was a transformational moment, which he relives here as the latest subject of Grant Thornton’s My Big Decision series.

As part of our video podcast series,  Luke revisits the entrepreneurial buzz of getting involved in what was then a relatively small business: “I rather enjoy the businesses at the earlier stages – it’s a more intimate, higher-risk undertaking, but it’s also the excitement, the drama of it, will you succeed, you’ve got something to prove… there’s an adrenaline rush out of that that is missing once a company gets beyond a certain size.”

Perhaps that’s why he went on to exit the business in 1999. By then, Pizza Express had grown from 12 to 250 restaurants, and the share price had soared from 40p to 900p – it was one of the success stories of the 1990s.

Since then, Luke has been the chair of various companies, including Channel 4 television for six years, and is current chair of Risk Capital Partners, Fast Track and the Royal Society of Arts. Last month [October 2010], Luke co-founded The Institute of Entrepreneurs, a new think tank to promote individual entrepreneurialism in the UK.

But it was Luke’s decision to take over Pizza Express that formed the catapult for his business career. Find out what happened in Luke Johnson’s My Big Decision interview  – and never miss a future My Big Decision podcast by subscribing to the series in iTunes. 

The My Big Decision series interviews leading business voices about a critical moment in their life. (Previous interviewees include high street fashion entrepreneur George Davies and marketing guru Seth Godin among others – see the full list below.)

Check out previous My Big Decision podcasts
You can browse all previous My Big Decision posts – or go directly to the individual podcasts on the links below:

• Marketing guru, Seth Godin
• Coffee Republic’s founder, Sahar Hashemi
• Dot-com entrepreneur turned investor, Julie Meyer
• King of the High Street, George Davies
• Freakonomics author, Stephen J Dubner
• Financial Times economist agony uncle, Tim Harford
• Online theorist, Chris Anderson 
• Cultural commentator, Fons Trompenaars