Bitter end for Jamie Oliver's restaurants

According to British sources, most (if not all) of Jamie Oliver’s restaurants are terminating their activities. This is a new big blow, after twelve restaurants were already closed in the last restructuring. 1,300 jobs are at risk.

Heavy losses

In total, 25 restaurants would be closed this time: 23 outlets of Jamie’s Italian, steakhouse Barbecoa and Fifteen in London. The restaurants narrowly avoided bankruptcy last year when Oliver injected 13 million pounds of his own capital into the chain. 12 out of 37 outlets were closed then, which cost 600 people their jobs. In the past few months, the search for another party to acquire the remaining outlets failed.

Oliver has been building a veritable food empire since 1997, including restaurants, TV shows and books, with mixed results. He has admitted in the past that 40 % of all his business ventures were failures. In 2015, Oliver closed the last outlet of cookery store chain Recipease and two years later, the only remaining Union Jack restaurant ended as well.

It is currently unclear what the consequences will be for franchised restaurants carrying the Jamie Oliver name, such as the two in the Netherlands (in The Hague and Rotterdam). According to the company itself, franchisees will not be affected by the bankruptcy, but in practice it often turns out that they end up with a similar fate a while later.