'I took a risk': How Pranzo's gamble to expand around Yorkshire has paid off

Risk taking has been fundamental to his success. He opened his second restaurant in Harrogate in October 2020 when the two-metre social distancing rule meant their existing cosy Ben Rhydding restaurant was closed.

Greco reflects: “It was a crazy thing to do looking back but the right decision because Harrogate is now a nice restaurant, does really well and we are in the top three on Tripadvisor.”

While the Harrogate venue at the former Mama Doreen’s Emporium did a roaring trade that December, both restaurants were forced to close for five months from January 2021 in further lockdowns.

In October 2023, Pranzo (which means lunch in Italian) moved its Ben Rhydding venue into Ilkley. Knowing there was low market demand for high street premises has seen Greco negotiate hard. “I wanted us to be the busiest place in Ilkley on a Saturday night. Edinburgh Woollen Mill had been empty for two years and we got a good deal on that.”

He knows Ilkley well having grown up in the area and attending St Mary’s school in Menston. Being brought up with an Italian father and making regular visits to Calabria in southern Italy to see his grandmother, or Nonna, as the Italians say, sparked his interest in the cuisine.

“We had been brought up to be huge pasta lovers. My Nonna was an amazing chef.”

Dad Tony had a few restaurants over the years and when Marco left school at 16 he went to work with dad, mum and sister in the family restaurant Grecos in Ilkley, the biggest in the town at 130 seats which was usually packed. Marco, now 40, says his dad did things slightly differently. “He brought over a pizzaiolo chef from Italy to teach us all to make proper pizzas and we imported a massive pizza oven from Italy.”

Greco’s first job was to make pastas and risottos and after a few years he spent a summer stint in the Italian port city of La Spezia preparing seafood with homemade pasta.

When he returned he had eyes on the family restaurant but his parents separated so closed their restaurant. Greco then did stints in restaurants around Leeds.

By the time he was 30 he knew he had an urge to be his own boss. “I’d also had a few years working in car leasing sales earning good money and that helped me buy a restaurant in Ben Rhydding in 2018.”

It was a cafe with a domestic kitchen and they did breakfasts and sandwiches, calling the venue Pranzo Italian Lunch Bar. “I was writing menus and trialling dishes that I had in my head to make my place unique. I didn’t want anything traditional because you can get a carbonara in any restaurant.”

To begin with it was just Greco and his father in the kitchen. Marco studied competitor menus and then got his portion sizes and prices just right. “We’d do a hundred covers on a Saturday, which might not sound a lot but when there’s only two of you in the kitchen making stuff from scratch, it was intense.” That popularity continued for two years until the Covid lockdowns.

After Harrogate, a third restaurant was opened in May 2024 at Horsforth, near Leeds.

He then started looking at city centres, with Leeds and York coming under scrutiny.

The York premises, opened in July this year on Church Street, ‘ticked every box’. “We love York, it’s amazing. There’s a completely different demographic there. It’s much younger than our customers in Ilkley for example. It is very touristy but we want regular locals too. In the other restaurants we have been used to looking at the bookings and adding 20 per cent on for walk-ins. Whereas in York we’ll have two booked and then have 50 in.”

The team have recently looked at Liverpool, Newcastle, Manchester and Sheffield. With the kind of scale Pranzo has reached and the costs of opening new restaurants, Greco says taking external equity investment may be a consideration before long.

Managing ever rising costs has been a challenge. With 152 staff, wages are the bulk of outgoings but there have been many price increases in food ingredients and wine.

Greco says: "We are making as much of our own stuff as possible. Wages have gone up 20 per cent and the national insurance rise is costing us so we say to the chefs that we have just given huge pay rises to that you can make more rather than us buying some products. And it’s a good thing to tell people - there aren’t many restaurants that can say that much is homemade.

“Having four restaurants gives us good buying power too.”

His own role is especially focussed around menu development and food quality. Pranzo Harrogate has an AA Rosette for Culinary Excellence and he has applied for the others to be recognised too.

As well as his staff, one other mainstay he credits is wife Sophie. As well as the long working hours that owning a restaurant brings and being closed for five months in the pandemic, the couple have had to manage personal worries such as their son being born prematurely at 26 weeks and in intensive care for three months.

Greco says: “Sophie has been really supportive. For the first two years I was hardly at home.

“Covid was a dark time. I had no idea what was coming when two restaurants were closed and we had bills to pay. There were a few months where I didn't know what was going to happen, whether I was going to survive. I remember a specific day when I felt really quite down about things because I had had such a good start and all of a sudden I had nothing coming in, a baby who was a month old.

"Then I thought that sulking wasn’t going to change things so I took a risk and believed in my products. The risk that we took in that period has paid off.”

This article originally appeared in Yorkshire Business Insider magazine