Some would call it karma for taking away Turkey Twizzlers
Following a tough year for his restaurant enterprise, TV chef Jamie Oliver’s business accounts have filed nearly £20 million in losses.
Jamie’s Italian chain was saved from bankruptcy after the celebrity chef injected £13m of his own money into the business, however 12 outlets still had to be closed in February along with one of his flagship Barbecoa steakhouses in London.
Overall sales under the Jamie’s Italian brand fell 11 per cent while Oliver’s licensing business also experienced a 9.3 per cent drop in income to contribute to the £20m hit.
Nonetheless, the 43-year-old experienced a boost in his media revenue, which made £8m in profit thanks to continued appearances on television and recipe book sales.
This helped allow the chef to pay himself a £6m dividend, as revealed by the latest accounts filed to Companies House.
In discussing what went wrong at Jamie’s Italian, Oliver revealed that he couldn’t understand the exact reasons behind the slump in sales.
“We had simply run out of cash,” he told the Financial Times. “And we hadn’t expected it.
“That is just not normal, in any business. You have quarterly meetings. You do board meetings. People supposed to manage that stuff should manage that stuff.
“I had two hours to put money in and save it or the whole thing would go to shit that day or the next day. It was as bad as that and as dramatic as that.”
Originally breaking through as The Naked Chef in 1999, Essex native Oliver went on to campaign for a number of regulation and cultural changes in how we consume food to combat obesity.
Most recently, he teamed up with Tesco to promote a series of healthy recipes via the food chain, having previously pocketed £10m from an 11-year association with Sainsbury’s.
