Jamie: I had to put in £12m of savings to stop my restaurants going bust
JAMIE Oliver has revealed that he had to plough £12million of his own money into his restaurant chain last year.
The TV chef was filming when he received an unexpected phone call informing him the 43-strong Jamie’s Italian chain was deep in the red.
Hundreds of jobs were on the line, as well as millions of investors’ cash.
Oliver was given two hours to put in his own savings to stop the chain from going bust the next day. He agreed, but the meltdown nevertheless resulted in 12 out of 37 Jamie’s Italian UK sites being closed, causing hundreds of redundancies.
The 43-year- old told Financial Times Magazine: ‘We had simply run out of cash. 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 s*** that day or the next day. It was as bad as that and as dramatic as that.’
The father of five, thought be to worth around £150million, added: ‘I honestly don’t know [what happened]. We’re still trying to work it out, but I think that the senior management we had in place were trying to manage what they would call the perfect storm – rents, rates, the high street declining, food costs, Brexit, increase in the minimum wage. There was a lot going on.’ Oliver immediately put £7.5million into the chain, which was built up from one restaurant in Oxford in 2008.
A further £5.2million of Oliver’s cash followed months later. This was topped up by £37million of loans from HSBC, and subsidies from other companies within the Jamie Oliver Group. Debts declared by the group last year amounted to £71.5million. Looking back, Oliver said: ‘Our story for the first six years was incredible. The culture that we built was phenomenal. We changed the whole mid-market landscape. We had it, and now it’s been taken away.’
His longstanding business partner Simon Blagden, who was chief executive of the chain, stepped down and was replaced by former Marks and Spencer boss Jon Knight. Oliver, who lives with wife Jools in a £9million mansion in Highgate, north London, appointed controversial boss Paul Hunt, 55, who is married to his sister Anna-Marie, to run Jamie Oliver Ltd in 2014.
He said: ‘I think I had to bring Paul in. I needed honesty. I needed clarity, and I needed trust to sort out a myriad of things, including over-leveraging and over-employment. Don’t forget that my day job’s doing “jazz hands” and making content for television and books. I can’t do everything.’
Earlier this year, Hunt was criticised by staff for being a ‘bully’ and destroying Oliver’s empire. Workers were said to be ‘desperate to leave’ after Hunt introduced a series of tough cost-cutting measures, sources told The Times.
‘Paul Hunt is an arrogant, incompetent failure,’ a source close to the TV chef said.
‘ He knows virtually nothing about restaurants... the day he resigns the staff should have a big party.’ Oliver hit out at the ‘untrue’ claims, calling them ‘nonsense’.
In his latest interview, Oliver continued: ‘[Paul’s] many things. But he’s honest, and he’s fair. I absolutely trust him. His job was to come in and clean up.
‘He has done the hardest and most fabulous job. I’m not saying that because he’s my brother-inlaw. I’m saying it because it’s a fact. Paul will step down at the right time. But there are times when you need family and you need the thorough trust that family brings.’
He added: ‘When there’s dough and cash and stuff getting nicked, if it’s not customers stealing things in the toilets – and napkins – it’s staff and ingredients and bottles of wine.
‘When you’re genuinely trying to run some decent businesses with some good values, sometimes you’ve got to bring the family in.’
‘I had two hours to put money in’