ITALIAN restaurant chain Prezzo will shut a third of its outlets after being hit by rising costs for ingredients and energy.
The group said closing the 46 loss-making sites will put 810 staff at risk of redundancy.
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The Prezzo in Aberdeen’s Union Square is not on the closure list, though two other Scottish restaurants in Glasgow and Livingston will go.
The firm said its utility bills had more than doubled in the past year along with sharp rises in costs for dough balls, pizza sauce, mozzarella and spaghetti.
The cuts will affect sites with footfall still below pre-Covid levels.
Prezzo said it would keep its restaurants in busier shopping areas, such as retail parks and tourist destinations.
The BBC says Covid restrictions at the height of the pandemic forced many hospitality businesses to shut their doors and furlough staff. The financial recovery for thousands of pubs, bars, restaurants and other venues has since been hampered by rising costs, especially for energy.
Prezzo, which went into administration in late 2020 before being bought by private-equity firm Cain International, said the cuts affected restaurants where “the post-Covid recovery has proved harder than we had hoped”.
Staff were informed about the closures on Monday and the chain said it would work to redeploy “as many staff internally as possible”.
“The last three years have been some of the hardest times I have ever seen for the High Street,” said Dean Challenger, chief executive of Prezzo.
“The reality is that the cost-of-living crisis, the changing face of the high street and soaring inflation has made it impossible to keep all our restaurants operating profitably,” he added.
The company explained that “double-digit wage inflation” had also hit its finances.
