The company will open the first site under the new concept, which will sit in its Heartland estate, later this week on the site of a former Crown Carveries pub, the Mill Farm in Cannock.
The new site will feature a pizza oven section, with pizzas priced at £4.99 to £6.99, plus a carving deck section, a burger shack section, wraps, baguettes, an all-you-can-eat breakfast and sharing options.
The drinks selection includes fizz on tap Frizzenti, cocktails, Brewdog Punk IPA and Heineken.
Speaking to M&C Report in February, M&B chief executive Alistair Darby hinted that the company was working on a new format within its existing brand portfolio that will feature a pizza offer.
Darby said that the company could learn a lot from Orchid’s Pizza Kitchen & Bar format and that the company was only interested in innovation that was scalable.
He told M&C Report: “Orchid did some really interesting stuff with Pizza Kitchen & Bar. It wasn’t the world’s newest idea, but they executed it very well. It was a good way of getting a food into a pub without building a huge in a kitchen, all the kit is front of house. There is a lot we can learn from that. If we can get pizza to continue to feature in our business then we probably will. One of things we have to think about is how without spending too much money we can build something around/complement pizza to make it even more appealing.”
When asked if the company was testing something along those lines? Darby said: We are working on some stuff.”
He admitted that if M&B is going to stay in touch with this market then it has to be innovating.
He said: “The consumer is developing so fast that you can’t afford to be back on your heels. That is one of the big benefits of the continuing investment we have made into consumer insights. Also if we are going to innovate, we have to work out how we innovate at scale. We are interested in innovation that is scaleable, it is very inefficient for us to do small scale innovation.
“What we will concentrate on first and foremost is innovation within the brand portfolio we have already got, rather than necessarily creating something brand new. There is an enormous amount of opportunity within our existing brand portfolio.”
M&B currently operates c110 Crown Carveries and c215 Sizzling Pub sites.