San Carlo

About San Carlo

Founded in 1992 in the UK by Sicily-born Carlo Distefano, San Carlo is an award-winning restaurant group with restaurants in Manchester, Birmingham, London, Liverpool, Bristol, Leeds, Leicester and the Middle East. It currently operates 25 sites across the UK and ten under franchise internationally. May 2022 saw the opening of a two-storey Knightsbridge restaurant under the group’s Cicchetti brand, its 25th site, with further international openings planned. “We already have a number of venues across the Middle East and we expect further growth here,” managing director Marcello Distefano said. In April 2024, Distefano told Propel his group is exploring international opportunities, saying: “Successful brands, especially in London, are wanted and looked for. So, I think the opportunities are there internationally.” In October 2025, Marcello Distefano told Propel that the company’s immediate focus is expanding overseas, with four new international openings planned for the next six months. The company, which was founded in Birmingham 33 years ago, currently operates 25 sites across the UK and ten under franchise internationally. The group plans to open restaurants in Miami, Morocco, Cairo and Bahrain in the next six months. Distefano said: “This government is not giving anything to us to make us really want to grow too much in the UK. So, it does put you off (opening new sites here). Don’t get me wrong, we still want to grow, and there are cities we still want to go into. We still want to go to Scotland; we want to go to Ireland. There are cities in the UK we’re not in yet, like Newcastle and Cardiff, and we were looking at sites. We were very close to agreeing on sites, but we started to see the market change. We saw the sentiment change, and as a family business, we don’t have to answer to anybody else, so we decided, let’s not take the risk. We are lucky that we have brands that are in demand internationally. It is a franchise model, which is great for us, because there’s no capex requirement from us. So, why not focus on that for the next couple of years? We’ve got three brands - Signor Sassi, San Carlo and San Carlo Cicchetti - and we are getting demand internationally for all of them. We have a nice pipeline in place. It gives something for the business to focus on while we see what happens in the UK.” In March 2026, San Carlo made its US debut with an opening under its Signor Sassi brand in Florida.

Why franchise with San Carlo

• ✓San Carlo took its first steps in franchising when it signed a large-scale franchise deal with Sheikh Marzouk Al Kharafi, chairman of the Americana Group, which owns and operates franchises for the likes of KFC, Pizza Hut and TGI Friday’s in the Middle East. The group said several years ago that it intended to refocus its international franchising portfolio, and was looking at openings in places including China, Egypt and Turkey.
• ✓In July 2026, Distefano said the group, which at the time operated 25 sites across the UK and ten under franchise internationally, is entering a period of strong international momentum, with five new openings set to be announced across Europe, the Middle East and North Africa. Distefano described the pipeline as evidence of “good momentum” outside the UK, with international markets offering clearer conditions for growth. “Our international side is going much stronger in terms of new sites that we’re opening,” he said. “There’s real opportunity there.”