A former Papa John's manager has opened a new pizza restaurant.

Gurpreet Rai launched The Pizza Joint in the Grove Park Shopping Centre in Sittingbourne on Saturday.

Gurpreet was previously the manager of Papa John's. He took over after a bad hygiene rating and managed to get the rating up to five stars in less than four months.

He left Papa John's in April 2021, and decided "pretty much straight away" that he wanted to do something independent.

He said: "Due to a bereavement and an issue with the funds from the sale of Papa John's materialising it took this long to finally start.

"We had a great reception on Saturday as we were doing a free pizza giveaway and have had great feedback since due to making our own dough in-house."

The new restaurant is now open from 11am-11pm, seven days a week, and food is available for takeaway and delivery.

In a Facebook post the day before opening, The Pizza Joint wrote: "Some of you may have seen the progress and we have kept quiet in regards to pictures and updates but hopefully it will be a big improvement to what was there before.

"Thank you so much to you all for your support and well wishes, we have had many people stop and say hello as we are working and a big thank you to those because those words of appreciation really do mean a lot and keep us going."