Jamie Oliver bags £5.2m payday despite restaurant chain collapse
Jamie Oliver took home £5.2m last year as his business empire suffered a slump in profit following the collapse of his restaurant chain.
The chef’s food and media business increased sales to £43.5m in the year to December 2018, but pre-tax profit almost halved to £7.8m.
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The slashed earning was largely due to a one-off charge of £9.9m relating to Oliver’s restaurant business, which collapsed into administration in May.
Roughly 1,000 employees were made redundant and all but three Jamie’s Italian branches were closed when the celebrity chef was unable to secure additional investment.
The £5.2m payout granted to Oliver was down from £8.6m the previous year. The company also pumped £4.8m into the restaurant chain in a bid to keep it afloat, taking the total funding to £16m in recent years.
Paul Hunt, chief executive of Jamie Oliver Holdings, welcomed a “resilient” set of results and said the company had “weathered the challenges” of 2018, as underlying profit before one-off costs rose 4.9 per cent.
Revenue from Jamie Oliver’s media business – which covers the chef’s cooking books and TV shows – fell slightly last year despite the launch of the Jamie Cooks Italy series.
However, the company secured new long-term licensing agreements for his branded products with Tesco and Shell. Jamie’s Italian also opened 12 new overseas sites, taking the franchise business total to 62 branches.
The celebrity chef’s restaurant chain has fallen victim to a wider squeeze in the UK’s casual dining sector, with increased competition and rising costs forcing many chains to shut sites.
Oliver has since said he wants to create a so-called B Corporation business – a company that balances purpose and profit – from the ruins of his restaurant chain.
Read more: Around 1,000 jobs lost as Jamie’s Italian collapses
“We are a commercial business with social purpose running through everything we do,” said boss Hunt.
“We have emerged from the past six months with complete clarity around our vision and values, as well as a renewed focus on what we want to achieve in the coming years.”
Main image credit: Getty