Jamie Oliver won’t bail-out Jamie’s Italian again
After injecting $23 million of his own money to save his struggling restaurant empire, Jamie Oliver has said he won’t bail them out again.
Oliver stepped in at the last minute last September to stop Jamie’s Italian restaurants from closing. But he told the Mail on Sunday that he “hasn’t got any more [money]”.
“I tried to do the right thing, I’ve never been paid by the restaurant group, I’ve always reinvested,” he said. “My living was always the other side. So I could have just gone, ‘Do you know what? Let it go.’”
Although he admits he is far from being “broke”, he says he doesn’t have the necessary money to put into his restaurant chain if called on again.
“There’s a point where I can’t put the other side of the business at risk as well and the people who work there,” he said. “The upside is I am now fully in control of the restaurant business. It’s fully owned by me. We’re getting on top of it and we’ve learned lots of lessons.”
Sheridan Randall, 29th October 2018
