Crosta Mollica wakes ‘sleeping giant’ supermarket pizzas to win Grocer Gold

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Crosta Mollica

Winner: Crosta Mollica

Frozen desserts, crackers, coffee… upmarket Italian brand Crosta & Mollica was busy innovating across a diverse array of fmcg categories prior to its acquisition by Perwyn Private Equity in early 2024. It was then that David Milner, its newly installed chairman, decided Crosta & Mollica should focus on owning a single category: pizza.

Having shed the ampersand from its name as part of a slick redesign of its Packaging in early 2025, the newly minted ‘Crosta Mollica’ has achieved year-on-year value sales growth of 48% to £104.5m to become the second best-selling pizza brand in grocery – no mean feat in a category worth £2bn.

Ahead of the redesign, the team at Crosta Mollica had shrewdly identified that supermarket pizza was a “sleeping giant”, which had been left behind as shoppers’ expectations of what constitutes good pizza had moved on. It noted that penetration, frequency and value per buyer were all declining in supermarket pizza. Meanwhile, the out-of-home pizza market was booming, so it needed to compete with restaurants rather than incumbent retail brands, it reasoned.

To do this, Crosta Mollica amplified its Italian storytelling and launched its Collezione Romana premium tier, carrying an rsp of £8.50 per pizza. Having launched in September, Collezione Romana delivered 72% incremental category sales in its first quarter. Incredibly, one in five Collezione Romana consumers had not shopped the supermarket pizza fixture in the previous 12 months.

And as if disrupting the UK pizza market wasn’t enough, Crosta Mollica is also scaling in mainland Europe. It is stocked in 3,000 locations with a standout performance in the Netherlands, where it holds 6.8% market share in frozen pizza.

Tellingly, even our Italian judge described Crosta Mollica’s approach to innovation as “excellent”.