How David Milner is hoping to work his magic again with Crosta & Mollica

After the battering UK food and drink has taken, you might think this was the wrong time to be investing in a new venture. But David Milner is resolutely optimistic.

“There’s still a wealth of opportunity” for British brands to grow and prosper, says the fmcg veteran. Even in Europe. “The UK is still right at the top in food and drink innovation. You go to Europe, and you see British brands that have done really well. Brands like Tyrrells, which is the number one hand-cooked crisp in France; or Little Moons, which was invented here and is now sold throughout Europe. Lots of [British] businesses go there and it doesn’t really work the other way around.”

It’s why Milner, after a storied career building and selling the likes of Tyrrells (for £300m), Lily’s Kitchen (for an estimated £100m), and St Pierre Groupe (for more than £300m) has invested in Crosta & Mollica.

He joined as executive chairman at the start of the year as the upmarket Italian brand secured private equity backing from Perwyn Private Equity to support its international expansion.

“I was looking for something to be more involved in,” says Milner, who is also non-exec chairman of Dash Water. “I was aware of Crosta & Mollica. I’d seen the brand in supermarkets with the wonderful stripey packaging and tried the product and thought it was great. So when it became clear there was an opportunity to acquire it, we bought it,” he says, matter-of-factly.

So what’s the plan? Sales were already growing strongly: up by 34% to £42.4m in the year ending 30 June, according to its most recently filed accounts, with pre-tax profits climbing to £4.6m. And it’s been helped by an ambitious NPD drive: from its origins selling breadsticks and pizza in 2022 it moved into gelato, dried pasta, pasta sauces and tiramisu; followed by chilled ready meals, sorbet-filled fruit shells, biscotti and ground coffee in 2023.

But Milner wants to focus on the brand’s pizzas, which already account for 70% of sales. “One of my philosophies in business is: to be successful, you have to focus. You can’t be a part-time competitor in a category like pizza, because it’s highly competitive, so we have been focusing our energies more on pizza than we had previously. We’re very unlikely to go into any more categories.”

But the pizzas also have a competitive advantage, says Milner. “We are the only pizza that’s made in Italy, and we are demonstrably better than the others,” he says. “Our pizzas are made halfway between Venice and the Dolomites.” It’s an advantage he’s always sought as “I’m not good at selling things that are crap. I’ve made life easy for myself by only working with companies that have really good products.”

Crosta & Mollica’s authentic Italian credentials certainly appear to be proving popular with shoppers. Value sales of its pizzas climbed 54.5% to £35.1m on volumes up 51.4% in the year to 1 June 2024 [NIQ] – this followed its Tesco debut in May. The brand launched a further four SKUs into the retailer in September.

But despite being Britain’s fifth biggest pizza brand, Crosta & Mollica is still “far from a household name”, admits Milner. His “number one objective” for 2025 is to “make the name more memorable and the brand more recognisable”.

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Milner is credited with changing St Pierre’s name from Carr’s in the UK to avoid confusion with Pladis’ water biscuits brand. However, he does not wish to rename Crosta & Mollica. “It’s not easy to remember, it means crust and crumb, but it is authentically Italian.”

In addition to playing up Crosta & Mollica’s Italian credentials, Milner hopes to secure more listings for the brand “because we’re still not in even half the stores in the UK”. For instance, Crosta & Mollica is yet to secure a listing with Asda, which is “the number two selling pizza retailer in the UK”.

“You can look at that and be disappointed, but I always think that’s quite exciting, because it means there’s lots of scope for distribution growth.”

Exports a major opportunity

And last but definitely not least is exports. Milner is hoping to “dramatically grow our international business, which is already the fastest-growing part, up 120% versus this time last year”.

He will take his learnings from “Tyrrells, which we launched all around Europe and Australia; Lily’s Kitchen, which is pretty much in every European market now; and St Pierre Groupe, which we launched in America.”

So far, so good. Crosta & Mollica already operates in France, Germany and the Netherlands. “We’ve just launched in Italy and we’re about to go to Australia,” adds Milner.

It’s a busy schedule. Despite living between Norfolk and London, he admits he has spent four out of five working days in the city this week. And face-to-face meetings are Milner’s preference.

“Lime Bike actually changed my life,” he grins, checking his watch for the time before he pedals off for a lunch meeting in St James’s Park.

“If you try and run your business without physically meeting people, you’re going to miss out on a lot,” During face-to-face meetings “obviously there’s the business back and forth, but then everyone relaxes, you say things you wouldn’t normally.”

“You’re a bit more open than normal, you start collaborating on an idea, stuff comes out of it. It’s the magic of getting people together.”

Whether it’s magic or just good business sense, it’s obviously working.