Why HAS Jamie let his ‘incompetent bully’ of a brother-in-law set his kitchen empire at war?
After a mass walkout of top staff, plunging profits and a savage assault on the boss who’s one of the family ...
JAMIE OLIVER is famed for his brand of cheery down-to-earth likeability; it’s all about ‘happy days’ and ‘bashing up’ some herbs.
A family man, devoted to wife Jools and their brood of five photogenic children, he is also much noted for solid family values, often harking back to his beginnings peeling potatoes in his parents’ pub.
And, aged 42, he counts his sister Anna-Marie, fondly known by the childhood nickname ‘Spanner’, as his best friend.
In an Instagram post last month he paid tribute to his ‘wonderful sister . . . amazing mum and wife’. The two siblings live just around the corner from each other in Clavering, near Saffron Walden, Essex.
Although during the week Jamie and his family live in a £ 10 million mansion in Hampstead, North London, it is to the Olivers’ country manor house — complete with boating lake and swimming pool — that they retire for precious weekends and holidays.
And all a mere five minutes’ drive from his sister Anna-Marie, 41, who lives in a similarly lavish £2 million Tudor pile — comprising formal gardens, swimming pool, tennis court and five acres of land where she grows her own vegetables — with her husband of 20 years, Paul Hunt, and their three boys.
‘We are so close to Jamie,’ said Anna-Marie yesterday. ‘I love him dearly.’
Their close relationship is professional as well as familial. Her husband was hired to run Jamie Oliver Ltd in 2014 and has recently assumed responsibility for his restaurants as well as the rest of his empire. Jamie defers day-to-day running of the business to him.
But in Hunt’s three years, he has developed a reputation for ruthlessness — making staff redundant on Christmas Eve, and cutting ties with Jamie’s friends and culinary mentors.
Last autumn, a crisis came to a head when two of Jamie’s trusted senior executives — his restaurants’ chief executive of ten years and his finance director — were the latest highranking staff to exit the firm. Oliver’s publicists said Hunt was ‘ restructuring’, which explained some departures.
On Saturday, though, an anonymous insider delivered a stinging dish of icecold revenge, describing Hunt as an incompetent bully who had a problem with high-flying women.
A picture was painted of a brusque Essex lad, a former City trader, who is ‘testosterone central’ — with a deep tan and taste for flashy holidays (most unlike workaholic Jamie himself.)
A ‘senior figure’ said: ‘Paul Hunt is an arrogant, incompetent failure. He knows virtually nothing about restaurants and even less about publishing.
‘He’s running the business into the ground, and the day he resigns the staff should have a big party.
‘Everyone at the business adores Jamie and they are very sad about what has happened, but morale is at rock bottom. There have been some wonderful women made redundant. I saw how Hunt eased them out.’
A ‘female executive’ added: ‘He always sits with his legs wide open and looks you up and down. He is testosterone central.’
Yesterday, loyal Jamie issued an instant rebuttal via social media, saying the attack was ‘nasty and untrue’.
He said: ‘First, let me say that the story is nonsense and I absolutely refute the picture they paint of Paul and my business.
‘I’ve known Paul for years both as a loyal brother-in-law and loving father as well as a strong and capable CEO who I charged with re-shaping the business.
‘He has radically transformed our business for the better. It’s now more successful, vibrant and creative than ever and now we are able to focus on doing the same in our UK restaurant business. I’m incredibly grateful for what’s been achieved in a fairly short time.’
And his sister Anna-Marie yesterday also told the Daily Mail: ‘It was a bit nasty, a bit personal. I’ve been married to Paul for 20 years and none of this is true. ‘He is lovely, a gentleman.’ She added: ‘Obviously, I love him dearly, and my brother dearly and they’re both gentlemen — and I think they just had to get rid of some people who were maybe struggling a bit.
‘I don’t think Paul wants to say anything, business is doing really well, but they’ve obviously had to make people redundant.’
Referring to some of her husband’s deeply disaffected critics, she said: ‘I think it was an ex-employee, wasn’t it?’
However, not everyone feels so positive about Mr Hunt.
Yesterday, Tara Donovan, who was the managing director of Jamie Oliver Ltd from 2005 to 2015, pointedly said she had no issues with any of the criticisms levelled at Hunt in The Times newspaper.
Ms Donovan, who lives in a £4.8 million townhouse in Kensington, West London, said: ‘ Well, I think everything was published that needed to be said.’
Note that she didn’t wish to utter one breath of contradiction.
SOWHAT has been going on in Jamie’s empire? After all, Jamie’s feet- on-theground attitude and natural instincts for what makes Middle England tick have made him one of Britain’s most popular campaigners and chefs, as well as generating stupendous wealth, estimated at around £240m.
And who is Paul Hunt, a figure who, while central to Jamie’s cherished family life, stands accused of creating a culture of fear and loathing in the companies closest to Jamie’s heart?
Certainly, Paul and Anna-Marie live an envy-inducing life — at least according to Anna- Marie’s Instagram feed.
Averaging five holidays a year, they spent New Year with their three teenage sons at a £400-a-night hotel in Dubai, followed by a ski trip to Val d’Isere. There is an annual summer holiday to Suffolk’s beaches, plus a sunshine holiday in Europe, often topped off with a winter getaway. In 2016 the whole family went to Rio for the Olympics.
They are very close to Jamie and his family, with Anna-Marie recalling being pregnant with her son Billy at the time Jools was expecting her second baby, Poppy.
In 2016 she posted pictures of her son James cradling Jamie’s newborn son River. A warm and loving sibling relationship that has survived the pressures of fame, then.
Yet how Paul Hunt came to have such a central role in Jamie’s empire is rather extraordinary — starting with the jaw-dropping fact that he was hired to run a multi-millionpound business in the first place.
ASA City trader, he ran into trouble for insider trading in 1999, the year after he married Anna-Marie.
He was working for Refco Overseas, the London arm of a U.S. futures broker. He and four others were found guilty of ‘front-running’, a practice where traders take an order for shares that is big enough to move the market price, but — before placing the deal — buy the shares and pocket a profit.
He was fined £60,000 and banned from trading for a year.
He then turned his hand to running various businesses. He was the chairman and one of the directors of Bikers Legal Defence, a motorcycle claims management company.
In September 2015, a year after he left, it went into administration with the loss of almost 100 jobs and debts of more than £ 5 million, including £ 300,000 owed to employees. He was also the director of two other firms: Clarke Hunt Limited and Clarke Hunt Holdings Limited.
Both were struck off at Companies House in 2013, with the holdings company declaring only £310 in total assets in its final accounts and Clarke Hunt Limited reporting total assets of £8,512 against liabilities of £14,000 in its 2011 accounts.
It’s no exaggeration to say that — bearing these failures in mind — he was a surprise choice to replace John Jackson, Sir Richard Branson’s former business mastermind who stepped down as CEO at Jamie Oliver in 2014.
Jamie Oliver, though, declared Hunt ‘sharp’ and ‘shrewd’ and said he regarded his brother-in-law as an ‘inspirational businessman’.
Hunt immediately took the axe to the loss-making parts of Jamie’s empire, shutting down the JME Group that made kitchenware and also his Recipease cookery schools.
Some sacked staff said that they were told to leave the premises mid-shift and were given no notice.
The Notting Hill branch of Recipease had Christmas Eve 2015 as its last day of trading.
One member of staff said: ‘Everyone here feels let down, particularly those like me who have worked a long time for Jamie and put everything into this shop. Christmas is the worst time to lose your job. The management have been ruthless.’
But it was clear Jamie was cooking
on far too many rings of his hob at once. And when Hunt came on board in July 2014, decisions were made to turn off the gas.
The last accounts filed for Recipease — run with one of Jamie’s friends, Simon Cochrane — showed debts of more than £8.7 m, rising from debts of £6.7 m the previous year.
Another venture with Cochrane was also shut down — Wood Fired Ovens by Jamie Oliver filed its last accounts in December 2016 showing debts of £427,000. It has now been dissolved.
The Union Jacks restaurants then shut in 2014. They were started in 2011 with Chris Bianco, a friend who’s one of the most revered pizza experts in the U.S. When the chain closed in 2014 it had debts of around £6.4 m.
All this had an effect up the line. Accounts for the parent company Jamie Oliver Holdings show that it made a £12.8 m loss in 2014, due to £18 m spent on ‘one- off costs’ — made up, to a large part, by debts owed by JME and Recipease. But the picture started to improve. Accounts for 2015 showed a pretax profit of £ 10.2 m, up from £200,000 the previous year, on sales of £31.9 m (down from £39.7m).
By then, serious woes concerning Jamie’s Italian were causing worries for the health of the whole group. In early 2016, Jamie’s Italian slumped from a pre-tax profit of £2.4 m to a loss of £9.9 m.
Paul Hunt said the venture was particularly exposed. He added: ‘ There’s an expectation of standards from Jamie. Our food costs are higher than anybody on the High Street and always will be. We use organic milk and free-range eggs. They’re part of Jamie’s ethos. That’s a pressure, too, but it’s something we believe in.’
It was announced that Jamie’s Italian was to be brought under the same management as Jamie Oliver Holdings, the television and book publishing business, at a new corporate headquarters in North London. Hunt became, effectively, commander-in-chief.
Within a year, three key executives tives had gone gone. Simon Blagden Blagden, the CEO of the restaurants, left after nearly ten years in charge. Tara Donovan, the managing director of Jamie Oliver Limited also left, as did Tara O’Neill, finance director of Jamie’s Italian.
Was Paul Hunt’s management to blame? A source told The Times: ‘ He has been given pay rises despite his tenure being plagued by failure and incompetence. Morale is at an all-time low.’ An ex- employee added: ‘ ‘He’s He’s been more focused on cost-cutting than quality. He’s not tried to rebrand or do anything different.’
Another said: ‘ He didn’t grasp the fundamentals of the business. He was really opinionated, but usually wrong.’
It’s not just Jamie’s Italian in trouble. The casual dining market is brutal — rivals such as Gourmet Burger Kitchen (GBK), Prezzo and Byron are also suffering. Jamie’s Italian has been hit hard by high rent and rates, fatigue over its menu, and serious questions over quality.
Jamie put £3 m of his own money into Jamie’s Italian last year, but in court documents, he admits the w whole 37-restaurant chain would ha have gone bust this spring without a restructure. It owes £71.5 m.
J Jamie’s Italian is now in a Company pa Voluntary Agreement (CVA), an emergency deal struck with his la landlords to stop his business go going into administration. A third of the restaurants are closing with 45 450 jobs being lost. Another Jamie re restaurant chain, Barbecoa, went in into administration last month.
A spokesman for Jamie Oliver re responded: ‘Jamie is right at the he heart of all parts of our businesses frmt h from working with the restaurant management team on driving through our turnaround strategy an and personally developing our menu offering, to campaigning for th the ban of the sale of energy drinks to kids, to filming a new TV series. Ja Jamie is most certainly across all pa parts of our business.’
But impressive stamina aside, is it wise that Jamie Oliver should put all his faith in Paul Hunt, whose business acumen, he believes, is second to none?
One female former executive said: ‘Jamie is a bright guy with two eyes and two ears. He must see what everyone else sees. But it’s a family business and they have extraordinary dynamics. Family is everything to Jamie.’