Pizza Union

Our client

Established in 2013, Pizza Union is a fast-growing hospitality business with five fast-casual pizza bars across London serving over 14,000 pizzas every week. Founder and Managing Director, Bobby Hashemi, built the business around all-day convenience and high-quality food delivered fast. Customers can order online for instant collection, or order on-site with a wait time of under ten minutes. Its high-energy clientele is typically young, dynamic, busy and in search of an atmospheric fast-dining experience.

The challenge

With more than 20 years in the hospitality sector, Bobby launched Pizza Union with a clear ambition – to build a completely cashless, digital-first business. To achieve that, he needed a finance team that could provide accuracy, reliability, and the capacity to grow with the business.

Pizza Union’s strategy has always been to outsource support functions, freeing up internal focus for building the business and delivering for clients. But outsourcing only works when partners truly understand the business. For Bobby, that means no surprises. He needs timely, accurate, weekly and monthly financial reporting- broken down line-by-line, to track performance, spot issues early, and keep a firm grip on margins and lost allocation.

Reports from the firm’s previous accounting provider lacked the detail, scale, and the kind of insight Bobby needed to make confident decisions. So, in 2022, he sought a new partner who could step in and deliver exactly what the business needed.

Our solution

AAB’s Business Advisory team has a wealth of expertise in the hospitality and leisure sector. From the outset, the team committed to building a tailored, fully outsourced digital finance function that would work as an extension of Pizza Union’s internal team.

Starting with developing an understanding of what wasn’t working previously, the team identified the gaps, the pain points, and what “better” would look like for Bobby. With that insight, they designed a bespoke accounting setup focused on delivering consistent, clear oversight of Pizza Union’s site operations.

AAB deliver a suite of services designed specifically around Pizza Union’s needs. The information the team provide to Bobby and his team means that they can focus on the running of the business with the knowledge that their finances are in safe hands:

• Highly tailored weekly flash reporting of sales, costs and trading information across all five locations.
• Comparisons of income and performance against forecasts for any timeframe.
• Weekly banking report/income reconciliation – from till to bank.
• End-to-end handling of supplier invoices, including tracking, query resolution, and payments.
• Line-by-line supplier pricing analysis to spot invoice inconsistencies.
• Two sets of detailed monthly management accounts- one for the board and one with profit and loss by site.
• Close liaison with auditors ahead of annual accounts preparation.
• Ongoing recommendations of tools and strategies to improve insight and efficiency.

Today, AAB is fully integrated into the business. With no in-house finance director or accountant, they provide end-to-end outsourced bookkeeping and accounting support. Data is shared straight from Pizza Union’s POS system, transforming it into clear, actionable insights. It’s not about volume, it’s about meaning. The team gives Bobby the confidence of knowing exactly what’s happening, what’s working, and where improvements can be made. Outsourced doesn’t mean second-best.

Over time, the team has adapted to the business’s needs, expanding reporting in-line with Bobby’s requirements, introducing new KPIs, and supporting in areas like supplier payments and invoice queries. As Bobby puts it:

“Their flexibility is important to me. Over time, we’ve brought in new KPIs and experimented with different ways of measuring profitability. Their flexibility around this and our changing reports is very helpful.”

 

Our impact

For Bobby and the wider Pizza Union team, the difference is night and day. Reporting is sharper. Accuracy is consistent. And management time has been freed up.

By Monday 12pm each week, all restaurant managers as well as Bobby and the senior managers receive the weekly flash report from AAB showing all KPIs for the full prior week trading. This saves valuable time compared to other, more time-consuming manual accounting systems, where paper records are gathered in each individual office, posted to head office and manually processed.

In Bobby’s words:

“I couldn’t be happier with the service I get from AAB. They have always delivered on their promises around accuracy and consistency, and this is critical for us. I know that with AAB, I have a correctly staffed team that I can trust and rely on for every aspect of our site’s finances.”

But the partnership goes beyond the numbers. AAB’s team has developed a deep understanding of Pizza Union’s operations, from supplier relationships to internal workflows, functioning as an extension of the business rather than an external provider. In a sector facing increasing challenges and complexity, this close integration is critical. The restaurant industry is fast-paced and labour-intensive, with many moving parts requiring constant attention. AAB supports this with detailed weekly reporting, insightful forecasting, and hands-on management of essential processes, including liaising with the payroll provider, resolving invoice discrepancies, and ensuring smooth payment operations.

“With AAB, I experience a better quality of output than I ever have before. They really stand out. They help us understand where we are and aren’t making money. What we seek in our accounts is outside the normal range of detail for a business our size. I’m looking for complete accuracy with no surprises, and that’s what I get. It pays for itself tenfold to have AAB on board.”