The Pizza Cafe Restaurant in
Newton Abbot: Our Story

Mark Thuell’s obsession was to create the perfect local pizza restaurant…

Mark’s early life was spent in the Far East where he first developed his love of Asian flavours he now uses. He studied hotel management in Torquay where he achieved an HND at the same time as his family acquired The Tall Ships in Dartmouth. Working as chef / manager Mark created and ran this very successful restaurant for 5 years, specialising in South East Asian / seafood dishes. He then embarked on his extensive world travels for 7 years, working and trekking especially around his beloved East. He returned to Devon with a vision of his future as a restaurateur and set about creating the restaurant that was to become his passion.

The Pizza Café was born in 1987 and from day one has always been an informal, friendly place where anyone can call in anytime for a coffee, snack or a 3 course meal with wines and beers from around the world. Home delivery was soon added, enabling the people of Newton Abbot to enjoy great tasting fresh pizza in the comfort of their own home.

The development of the Pizza Café has been an organic evolution and Mark understands the need to keep pace with the challenging marketplace, always responding to the changing tastes and lifestyles of its many hundreds of loyal customers. A willingness to introduce new foods such as wraps, paninis, tex-mex and fresh fruit smoothies ensured that the Pizza Café became a leader and innovator in the fickle restaurant business and also somewhat of an institution in Newton Abbot. The Pizza Cafe embraces social media and is a productive user of Facebook and Twitter, these popular sites are well subscribed and fun to visit.

Mark appreciates that good staff is the key to success and one of the strengths of The Pizza Café is the quality, loyalty and dedication of its staff. Manager Steve Campbell started as a chef on the very first day, Assistant Manager Tracy Grant, 23 years ago as a dishwasher and Shift Managers Luke Turpin, Sarah Strickland and Christie Cheer have over 35 years experience at the Pizza Café between them. The carefully chosen staff give the restaurant it’s excellent customer service and friendly relaxed atmosphere.

The Pizza Café leads from the front with it’s strong ethical policy. Coffees and teas are fair-trade organic, ingredients are high quality locally sourced, all waste is recycled and packaging is biodegradable wherever possible.

A local charity supporting artistic endeavour in the youth of Teignbridge known as The Helen Foundation is supported by the Pizza Cafe with a donation of 25p from every American Graffiti pizza sold. Over £500 was raised in 2010.

The magic of The Pizza Café lies in its ability to appeal to a wide cross section of the local community from the very young to the elderly, from families to business people, and couples to larger parties. Well over 1000 people have joined the loyalty club which offers 5% discount on all purchases as well as free pizza on special occasions.

Over 25 years on and the initial foundation concept of ultra fresh food, attention to detail, fast friendly attentive service all at fair and reasonable prices ensures the future for this unique establishment.

The vision lives on.