Firezza co-founder Edin Basic is backing a new Japanese-inspired grab and go concept Norigami, MCA has learnt.
Norigami has been developed by former Apple and Oracle employee Arthur Liegeois, who saw a gap in the market for a healthy eating, free-from High Street grab and go brand.
The gluten, lactose, nut and wheat free concept is based on the Japanese street food of onigirazu, a ‘sushi sandwich’ with a rice filling and nori seaweed carrier, combined with global flavour combinations, such as Spanish egg chorizo, North African chermoula chicken and Sir Lankan sweet potato curry.
Liegeois has launched Norigami as a lunchtime delivery service from a production kitchen in Aldgate East, and as a pop-up at Sourced Market St Pancras, with plans for a first retail outlet in Q4 of 2018, and an overall aim to open 30 sites in 10 years, in the UK and internationally.
Basic, who recently joined as a non-executive director, left Firezza in November 2017 after it was sold on by PizzaExpress, its owner since February 2016.
Alongside fellow Bosnian refugee Ado Medjedovic, who left after the PizzaExpress acquisition, Basic grew the premium pizza delivery concept from scratch up to 22 sites.
Liegeois told MCA: “The idea is to have a proper retail shop with a kitchen where we can produce everything and deliver from there, then multiply the number so we can cover the whole city.
“I think we can be much more flexible than just bricks and mortar retail sites. As long as we are solid in the kitchen we can scale it up.
“Our retail shop model is very small, with a counter. We don’t need a large footprint, just a large footfall. We envisage it as grab and go.”
He said the concept would benefit from the UK market’s familiarity with sushi, but also seek to differentiate itself.
He added: “What we’re doing doesn’t include raw fish, so while to some extent were piggybacking on the sushi market, we’re going to diversify and deviate from it rather quickly if we have a chance.
“We are using white sushi rice at the moment, but we want to use more alkaline grains like red, brown and black rice.
“Sushi is part of our legacy, but we want to go further with new combinations.”
