Jamie Oliver admits his family were ‘the best antidote in the world’ after restaurant collapse

Jamie Oliver claims his family ‘were the best antidote in the world’ as his multi-million pound restaurant empire collapsed, resulting in as many as 1,000 job losses.

The celebrity chef closed 22 of his Jamie’s Italian restaurants in May 2019 after profits plummeted and customers stayed away, while Oliver owned eateries Barbecoa, Fifteen and Union Jack Pizzas also entered administration.

But as his restaurant chains crumbled, Oliver, 44, admits he was thankful to have the support of clothing designer wife Jools and their five children – Poppy, 17, Daisy, 16, Petal, 10, Buddy, nine, and three-year old River.

He told People: ‘When you’re tested like I’ve been, all that matters is friends, family and health.’ 

Administrators recently revealed that much of the £80million-plus owed by Oliver’s collapsed Italian chain, launched by the chef in 2008, will probably never be paid back to creditors.   

Its administrator KPMG has revealed that the majority of the £83million owed to secured and unsecured creditors such as food suppliers, councils and landlords will not be recovered. 

‘We smashed it for eight years, and we struggled for four years,’ Oliver said of his empire’s rise and catastrophic fall, but admitted to feeling relief as a result of the insolvency.

He added: ‘The pain’s gone. The hemorrhaging of cash is gone. And there’s a result. It’s not the result I wanted, but now you move on.’ 

Of his relationship with his wife throughout a challenging year, he revealed  that domestic life had not always been smooth, despite her constant support. 

‘It’s not always easy. She probably hates me 40 percent of the time, but 60 percent is pretty good,’ he said. 

Oliver is now chanelling his energy into new childhood obesity campaign Bite Back 2030,  and new series of cookbooks, among them Ultimate Veg, his first to exclusively feature vegetarian dishes. 

He said: ‘I want to be useful. You do wise up. Hopefully I won’t make the same mistakes, and I’ll keep being creative and trying to make positive change.’ 

Auditors said that while three Jamie’s Italian restaurants and delis at Gatwick Airport remain open, the people owed money for the past eight months are likely to be significantly out of pocket.

KPMG’s progress report, seen by the Guardian, says: ‘The secured creditors will likely suffer a significant shortfall. Based on current estimates’.  And its main lender HSBC will also have to swallow ‘a significant shortfall’, it says.

Jamie’s own holding company is owed more than £50million and is likely to lose most of that cash, it also emerged.  

Jamie’s Italian was the most high-profile fall from grace in a year when hundreds of restaurants closed across the UK. 

Around 1,000 jobs were lost at the Naked Chef’s restaurants in 2019, in a brutal market.

‘To survive in this industry is really tough,’ Oliver told Channel 4 after his business went into administration, adding: ‘I opened lots of big restaurants, and I think people like smaller, medium-sized restaurants, and you have these big cathedrals that you can’t fill’.

He went on: ‘I appreciate how difficult this is for everyone affected. We launched Jamie’s Italian in 2008 with the intention of positively disrupting mid-market dining in the UK high street, with great value and much higher quality ingredients, best-in-class animal welfare standards and an amazing team who shared my passion for great food and service. And we did exactly that’. 

But before its collapse critics described long waits for food, short-staffed restaurants and concerns over the quality of ingredients – and how healthy meals really were, especially for children.

Oliver had dipped into his own personal bank account to pay the wages of roughly 1,000 staff who have been made redundant.  

But some were upset and infuriated when they turned up at work to find them closed down and the locks changed.

One, named Lucy, lost her job at the Glasgow Jamie’s Italian after three years there.

She told the BBC: ‘We knew it wasn’t doing as well as we’d want it to be. My partner was meant to be on shift this morning.

‘He was told at the last minute not to come in as the locks were being changed.

‘We were then invited to join a conference call and told we had all been made redundant, effective immediately.’

The TV star founded Jamie’s Italian in 2008 with his ex-mentor Gennaro Contaldo and soon swelled the company’s presence to 40 outlets nationwide.

But in 2017, six branches were closed and by May the business had racked up £71.5million worth of debt as the chef revealed the company had ‘simply run out of cash’.

According to Companies House, Jamie Oliver Holdings turned over £32 million last year – a staggering £87,670 a day.

Staff at Oliver’s flagship restaurant in Birmingham claim they were sacked by email just 30 minutes before the company announced it had collapsed.

One worker said: ‘I’m really angry because Jamie won’t be the one looking for a job and struggling to pay his bills, it’ll be poor saps like us who worked for him.’

Oliver, who shot to fame with a host of TV shows and cook books, has netted an estimated £240million since entering the public eye.

In January 2019 he and his wife Jools – with whom he has five children – snapped up a £6million 16th Century mansion in Essex. They also own a mansion in Hampstead, north London, worth £8.9million.