Paula MacKenzie: the PizzaExpress CEO shares her turnaround playbook

Paula MacKenzie took over as chief executive of PizzaExpress in 2022, six months after a debt restructuring had closed 73 restaurants. The brand had cycled through seven chief executives in eleven years. But an encounter with a business coach changed how she spent her first year in the job.

MacKenzie trained as a chartered accountant at EY, then moved through finance roles at various big-name food and beverage brands. Her connection to PizzaExpress goes back further than any of it, to a homesick teenager at boarding school who treated the restaurant as her safe space.

Speaking to Sir Richard Harpin on the Business Leader podcast, MacKenzie talks about the transition coach who reshaped her first 100 days, why she revived a product her predecessor had axed and her Big Hairy Audacious Goal of taking PizzaExpress to 1,000 restaurants worldwide.

In our interview, you will learn:

• The one piece of HR advice that shaped her critical first 100 days
• How KFC’s talent machine moulded her into a CEO
• The “master franchisee” model behind PizzaExpress’s overseas expansion
• Why listening should always come before acting in a leader’s first year

Revenues have gone up steadily during Mackenzie’s four-year tenure, but this has not yet led to rising profits for the business, which carries long-term debt. That is because a key part of the CEO's long-term growth strategy has been to invest in the business.

PizzaExpress has become well-known for its loyalty scheme. Run through an app, it allows customers to make table bookings – requiring hefty investment in digital infrastructure and technical staff.

It's expensive but essential for a modern restaurant chain to thrive, she believes. A quarter of UK adults eat in one at least once each year at the moment, she points out. In 2025, the loyalty scheme had onboarded four million PizzaExpress members.

PizzaExpress has 360 stores in the UK and she has set the “big, hairy, audacious goal” of 1,000 by 2030. Then there is the physical makeover of those iconic restaurants. Around 80 per cent of the chain’s high-street footprint has now been refurbished. “They look immeasurably better now,” says Mackenzie, revealing that data shows these stores experience up to a 10 per cent uplift in sales.

Could PizzaExpress take the US?

All of PizzaExpress's UK restaurants are equity-owned, and the chain employs its 7,500 staff directly. However, international expansion is being pursued with a different model. In growing markets abroad like India, Cyprus or Turkey, for example, it follows a master franchisee model, where one business will operate the PizzaExpress franchises within that territory.

This brings in fresh capital and local expertise, allowing for faster expansion, though smaller margins. There are currently around 90 PizzaExpresses outside the UK. However, in some territories, PizzaExpress sticks to its direct ownership model, including in Hong Kong and Dubai. Of course, there’s one obvious market she’s yet to take a slice from.

“I would love to bring PizzaExpress to America,” says Mackenzie. There is no shortage of pizza competition there, and fierce regional loyalties to pizza styles, from Chicago to New York. PizzaExpress would need to find the right master franchisee or joint venture partner to attempt this, she acknowledges.

Credit to the Colonel

If there’s a thread that runs through Mackenzie’s varied career, it’s coaching. Her first bit of coaching feedback came when she was five years old, she reflects, when her younger sister said she was “bossy”, though it’s a loaded term that Mackenzie rejects. “I don’t like to use the word bossy, especially as a female,” she says. “Let’s just say I was ‘strident, determined and driven’ – our family was my first team.”

After a four-year stint as head of commercial finance at Innocent Drinks, at age 27, Mackenzie joined KFC. “It was literally seen as the devil,” she recalls, because it was such a different kind of fast-food business. But KFC gave her training that transformed her as a leader.

“It’s a talent machine that just happens to sell chicken,” she says. It has a deliberate policy of developing the next generation of leaders by giving people, usually from their late twenties, “cross-functional critical experiences”, moving them around the business.

This gave Mackenzie the chance to be a supply chain director, a chief development officer, chief financial officer and a chief marketing officer. After all that experience, she became UK managing director in 2017. Both Innocent Drinks and KFC offered formal coaching and the latter even provided her first mentor.

To begin with, Mackenzie was defensive. “It’s so funny that I looked at it as a negative. The first thing I thought was, ‘What’s wrong with me?’” KFC’s UK CEO even mentored her at one point. This set her in good stead to take on the CEO role at PizzaExpress in May 2022. “People often forget that for someone to be a CEO, somebody else wants to make you their CEO. Why?” mulls Mackenzie.

A mixture of coaching, mentoring and the right experiences in positions of responsibility can earn you the right to be considered, she found. She was headhunted for the opportunity. “I would give this advice to anyone in the early stages of their career: get as much variety of experience as you can. You can get as much out of big companies as from entrepreneurial start-ups.”

The legacy Paula Mackenzie wants to leave

Coaching didn’t just help Mackenzie prepare for the PizzaExpress role – it helped her grow into it. “I was fortunate enough to have a CEO transition coach. Who even knew there was such a thing?” she says. The idea is that the chosen CEO may have emerged as the strongest candidate, but that doesn’t mean that they are the polished item.

Dr Ty Wiggins was recommended by the recruitment consultant involved in her hiring process. “Every new CEO should have a coach that helps them with the transition,” Mackenzie now believes. “I would say if you can stomach it, you should be open-minded enough to do it. You will be happier with yourself that you gave your best performance.” One of the coach’s key pieces of advice to her was that leaders don’t make ‘people decisions’ quickly enough in their first year in the role, for example.

With the help of her transition coach, Mackenzie set about making her mark on PizzaExpress. But it was a gradual process that required patience. “Literally day one, people are expecting you to say, ‘Go and do X, Y, and Z,’” cautions Mackenzie, “but it doesn’t work like that. You’re trying to assimilate. The first weeks and months, I’m listening, listening, listening, to get a super-sharp diagnosis.”

The other trap to avoid, apart from haste, is perfectionism, she advises; it can lead to a kind of paralysis. “‘Good enough’ is good enough for the organisation to get going,” she reckons. This is a tip she observed working with other successful leaders. You need to keep momentum, even as you are adjusting things.

Once you have finished your listening exercises and set about reorganising the key people around you and structures within the business, the CEO’s role can change, she has found. The part she enjoys most now is leading a business “like an air-traffic controller”, coordinating action with a bird’s-eye view. And she continues to coach people at PizzaExpress, adding to the hundreds of individuals she believes she has now coached across her career. “I hope it’s a legacy that I leave in that respect,” she reflects.

Paula MacKenzie's four lessons for leaders

Invest in a transition coach, even if it feels unnecessary. Mackenzie was initially defensive when she was assigned a mentor at KFC, wondering, “What’s wrong with me?” She now believes every new CEO should have a coach to guide them through the transition, and credits the practice with helping her give her best performance in the role.

Listen before you act. Arriving at PizzaExpress, Mackenzie resisted the pressure to make immediate changes. Instead, she spent her first weeks and months “listening, listening, listening” to build a sharp diagnosis of the business before reorganising people and structures around her.

Don’t let perfectionism stall momentum. Mackenzie warns that chasing the ideal solution can lead to paralysis. She believes “good enough” is often sufficient to keep an organisation moving forward while further adjustments are made.

Seek a variety of experiences early in your career. Mackenzie’s own path took her through supply chain, development, finance and marketing roles at KFC before she reached managing director. Her advice to those starting out is to gather as broad a range of experience as possible, across both big companies and entrepreneurial start-ups.

Listen to the full conversation with Paula MacKenzie on the Business Leader podcast.