Alice Pizza, touted as Italy’s largest fast-casual pizza chain, will soon have new owners, but the acquisition doesn’t appear to be a rescue mission. In fact, its buyers envision it as pizza’s answer to Shake Shack.
Lifestyle Fund II, the private equity fund managed by Quadrivio & Pambianco, announced this week that it has joined European foodservice specialist Capdesia Group and a group of co-investors to acquire 100% of the popular chain, which specializes in Roman-style pizza al taglia. A binding agreement has been signed, and the transaction is expected to close in September.
The Giovanni family founded the chain and still owned 30% in a partnership with Green Arrow Capital’s Taste of Italy Fund at 70%.
Dominico Giovanni opened the first Alice Pizza location in 1990 in Rome and quickly began adding new stores. In 2012 Alice Pizza spurred additional growth with the launch of a franchising program. To keep the pizza’s quality high, Giovanni even took an unusual step: He created a pizza academy specifically to teach his dough recipe, which depends on a long, slow fermentation resulting in a light, highly digestible crust.
Today there are 231 Alice Pizza locations, 220 of which are in Rome and Milan, with the remaining stores in Hong Kong, France, Spain and Malta, plus one outpost in the U.S.: Alice Pizza & Restaurant in Philadelphia. The Philly store, which opened in 2017, is a bit of a departure for the brand, however, offering a full sit-down dinner menu, bar, desserts and reservations along with its standard Roman-style pizza offerings.
As a global brand, Alice Pizza reportedly generated total system sales of more than €115 million ($131 million) in 2025 and finished the year with a consolidated EBITDA of €12.6 million ($14.3 million), a 20% margin on net company revenues.
In a press release, H. Ashton Crosby, co-founder and managing director of Capdesia, argued that the brand could upend the competition, saying its quality, speed and price point give Alice “the potential to disrupt the global legacy pizza players in the same way that Five Guys and Shake Shack disrupted burgers.”
Crosby didn’t explain his reasoning, but it’s not difficult to imagine what he’s envisioning for Alice Pizza.
Chains like Five Guys Burgers and Shake Shack took a cheap, ubiquitous food, the fast-food burger, and elevated it into a premium and experiential product that easily eclipses the Big Mac, at least in customers’ eyes. Similarly, Alice Pizza replaced standard heavy, conveyor-belt dough with an artisanal, 24-hour slow-fermented Roman crust. But customers can still get their orders fast: Alice Pizza’s al taglio model means the kitchen can bake large rectangular sheets of pizza ahead of a rush to keep the display cases fully stocked and drastically reduce ticket wait times. And since Roman-style slices are sold by weight, that means tighter control of inventory and far less food waste.
And just as Five Guys allows unlimited customization, Alice Pizza’s customers can sample multiple premium slices and explore different artisanal flavors in a single sitting. Selling scissor-cut slices by weight also allows the customer to control exactly how much they spend, appealing heavily to both budget-conscious snackers and premium foodies.
Alice Pizza’s buyers have said they plan to push the brand harder across Europe and Asia and possibly open additional stores in the U.S. So, in time, the Alice Pizza location in Philadelphia might have some company – and Domino’s might eventually have a new rival to contend with.
