Appetite for pizza with a ‘healthier twist'

Four businessmen have left high-profile jobs to cut a slice of Ireland’s takeaway pizza market with a product that they say won’t cost consumers their health.

Declan Breen, John Nolan and David Fitzpatrick, who worked in finance and construction in the Middle East, along with former Musgrave and Kerry group director, Adrian Grey, are behind the company that has the all-Ireland master franchise for NKD Pizza.

NKD opened its first outlet on Orwell Road in Rathgar in Dublin recently, offering a new take on traditional pizza that caught Breen's eye and taste buds while he was working in Dubai.

“It’s not a health food, but it’s a healthier twist on the takeaway pizza,” Breen says. He adds that the high-protein, high-fibre flour used in the base and quality ingredients are the key.

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Ingredients

NKD has invested about €500,000 in setting up the business. It will focus on Dublin first but begin expanding in the final quarter of next year.

The company gets many of its ingredients in Ireland. Shackleton Mills in Kilkenny supplies the flour, Dawn Farms in Waterford is responsible for the meat. It imports the mozarella but Breen hopes to change this soon. NKD also sells cookies from Bia Ganbreise in Co Cork.

NKD began in New Orleans in 2005, but a rapid expansion almost put paid to the company. Lebanese businessman George Farhar bought it and took it to the Middle East, where Breen discovered it.

While the pizza tasted great, he believed it would better still if made with higher-quality Irish-made ingredients. Breen says that the mix works so well that it could open doors for Irish suppliers to the franchise as a whole.