Pizza Express is banning mobile phones for three hours each day this summer as part of a campaign that will also include a new all-you-can-eat promotion.
The chain, which has 360 restaurants across the UK, is encouraging diners to put their phones away between 2pm and 5pm when visiting between August 11 and 29.
Staff will also offer customers 90 minutes of unlimited classic Margherita, American and Padana pizza for £17.50 per adult or £10 per child during those hours.
It comes amid the growing Smartphone Free Childhood movement in which parents commit to only give their child a smartphone aged 14, with no social media until 16.
A Dutch social movement called The Offline Club is also burgeoning, which organises community events in the UK where attendees are asked to lock their phones away.
Pizza Express will ban phones between 2pm and 5pm when visiting between August 11 and 29
Staff will also offer customers 90 minutes of three unlimited classic pizzas for £17.50 per adult
The ‘Pizza O’Clock’ campaign follows a YouGov survey which found 34 per cent of Brits spend more time on their phone each week than with family or friends.
The poll also found 57 per cent spend less than 90 minutes of quality time with loved ones every day; and 85 per cent are not always fully engaged at mealtimes.
Anyone caught looking at their phone should be given a ‘red card’ by anyone at their table and then be forced to carry out a forfeit, according to the campaign details.
Pizza Express said orders must be placed before 5pm, although the full 90-minute participation window can run after this time and will still be valid for the promotion.
Anyone with leftover slices of pizza on the table at the end of the window will be allowed to take it home, but cannot place an order at the end just to take it away.
The campaign dubbed ‘Pizza O’Clock’ encourages customers to put away their phones
Diners can eat unlimited classic Margherita, American and Padana pizza for 90 minutes
The offer will be valid at all PizzaExpress sites except from airport locations, Welcome Break sites, Live music venues or when ordering at supermarket pod concessions.
It will also not be valid at the eateries of Jersey St Brelade; Jersey St Helier; Falmouth – Maritime Square; Newquay – Rocklands; Ashford – Designer Outlet; Edinburgh – Northbridge; Edinburgh – Queensferry Street; and Edinburgh – George IV Bridge.
The first Pizza Express opened on Wardour Street in London’s Soho on March 27, 1965, founded by Peter Boizot who had been living in Rome. He shipped over a pizza oven from Naples and was also the first man to import Peroni beer to the UK.
Mr Boizot sold his shares in the firm in 1992 and it was owned by a variety of firms until Chinese private equity group Hony Capital bought it in 2014 for £900million.
A restructuring in 2023 then saw Hony Capital hand over the business to its bondholders in a debt-for-equity swap after it permanently closed 73 outlets.
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