AIL Meets founder of London's hottest Pizza restaurant, Giuseppe Mascoli

Since opening its first branch in 2008, Franco Manca has been rated as London’s best pizzeria by anyone who has ever eaten there. When we caught up with founder Giuseppe Mascoli, we found that it might also just be the capital’s most democratic restaurant.

There are currently 14 branches of Franco Manca and there’s a plan to open over 20 more in the coming years. How can this happen without compromising on quality?
At the moment we are searching for more suppliers. The mozzarella is pretty easy because we make it in Somerset, and ingredients like tomatoes and flour are not a problem. I went to Italy last month to see a lot of small butchers that do charcuteriein theMolise and Abruzzo area, at the moment we have four suppliers so we may have more in the future. When we run out we’ll change things. Same goes for the wines, the organic suppliers are very small, so we found another one who is their neighbour. We will sacrifice a bit of consistency because obviously different suppliers will have different products, you won’t have the same wines all year round and the charcuterie, specials and some of thecheeses will vary, so the solution is variation.

Would you like Franco Manca to become as ubiquitous on the high street as Pizza Express?
I don’t think we can do that. We can open only six or seven outlets a year at the moment so as you can imagine it’s not feasible. But I think that the idea has legs and you can carry a lot of producers and suppliers. We’ve just started doing the bresaola from a butchers’ in France which is nice, we keep adding suppliers. Instead of outsourcing to big factories we’ll have a tiny bit of inconsistency but I think that’ll be good because it’ll add a bit of variation.

You have a very fair system where directors are not paid huge bonuses and don’t take shareholder dividends, how has this benefited the business?
Nobody gets paid more than ten times the salary of people on minimum wage. I don’t think it’s a good idea to have super wages, I think it’s ridiculous, it makes your life worse instead of better. It’s a very egotistical thing because you just end up buying a helicopter!

It must very gratifying for the employees?
When the company went on the stock exchange months ago, we had about £20,000 worth of shares. Every single employee got given the same amount of shares regardless of whether they were managers or washer-uppers.

When Franco Manca opened in Brixton Market it paved the way for the area to become a foodie haven.
It was more of a catalyst, people saw it was possible so they started doing it themselves.

You used to own Blacks members’ club in Soho, what made you want to buy it?
To get drunk every night!

Which London restaurants have excited you recently?
I don’t go out much to restaurants would you believe, and I always go to the same places. There is a Danish place on Golborne Road (Snaps + Rye), and another one run by a Palestinian guy who makes incredible pita and hummus.