Jamie Oliver closes 22 restaurants with 1,000 jobs lost
All high street Jamie’s Italian locations have shut their doors, alongside the chef’s Barbecoa and Fifteen restaurants in London.
Administrator KPMG, which is handling the process, confirmed this would result in approximately 1,000 redundancies and says staff will be paid in full up until the date of its appointment.
Jamie’s Italian, Jamie’s Italian Coffee Lounge and Jamie Oliver’s Diner at Gatwick will continue to trade in the short term while the administrators explore options for the site.
KPMG says Oliver himself has invested £4m in to the company since the start of the year and the group recently undertook a process to secure additional funding, but was unsuccessful.
“The current trading environment for companies across the casual dining sector is as tough as I’ve ever seen," says Will Wright, partner at KPMG.
“The directors at Jamie Oliver Restaurant Group have worked tirelessly to stabilise the business against a backdrop of rising costs and brittle consumer confidence. However, after a sales process which sought to bring new investment into the business proved unsuccessful, the team took the incredibly difficult decision to appoint administrators.
“Unfortunately, with insufficient funds available to be able to trade the business in administration, all but the Gatwick Airport restaurants have now closed. Our priority in the coming hours and days is to work with those employees who have been made redundant, providing any support and assistance they need.”
Oliver's international restaurants and Fifteen Cornwall, which operates under franchise, will continue to trade as normal and are not affected by the administration.
The chef told the Financial Times last year that he had invested £13m of his own money in to the business in autumn 2017 to stop it going under. Writing on Twitter today Oliver expressed his remorse at the situation.
