Wednesday, May 22, 2019

Blind Item #12

Somehow this foreign born A list celebrity chef managed to make millions of dollars from his company while all his investors lost tens of millions.

25 comments:

Tricia13 said...

Jamie Oliver

Rachel said...
This comment has been removed by the author.
sandybrook said...

Jamie went out of business yesterday 1,000 people lost jobs

Zebra Seasoning said...

He put millions in himself, how'd he make millions?

Flashy Vic said...

Memorably described by Viz magazine as:

"the fat tongued Mockney twat."

sandybrook said...

Obviously he laundered money Zebra, just like everyone else Enty writes about that runsbusinessesthese days.

MountainMama said...

Sad about all those people losing their jobs, I wonder how it got that bad? One would think he would have been closing restaurants prior to this.

Brayson87 said...

@Mountain, Looks like people just weren't going to his restaurants as much.

Vita said...

Flashy-- that description! They really dont mince their words, huh!?!

He tried to do a really great thing with trying to teach healthy eating habits to Americans, especially school-aged children and their families. Important stuff, but he didn't always do it with finesse. Other times, he was equally passionate about it, but with some ease and charm. Dont know if that whole project had any factor in the restaurant businesses.

Wee S said...

Went to a Jamie's Italian once for a leaving meal. It was housed in a listed building - beautiful architecture. Only good thing about the whole experience; the food and service was shocking. Not surprised it went bust.

Craig said...

Oliver makes money from his books. His restaurant chain has failed. Which is a shame as I was in his Manchester place fairly often. Even had a gold club membership.
The fact is that it's a cutthroat business and restaurants come and go. They don't really have a long shelf life in UK cities because there is always a new kid on the block ( currently in Manchester that kid is Kala although the chef owner Usher is an utter bastard. )

Businesses fail. Oliver made no money from this. I would have thought that a lawyer might understand that people can operate many businesses which are not financially tied to each other.

Randaleese said...

Never heard of him..???

sandybrook said...

So basically Jamie is the English Guy Fieri: presents a good front as a chef but when he opens a restaurant it sucks and swallows hard.

dtfan said...

Jamie Oliver did not make millions of "dollars" from his restaurant chain, that's a complete lie. He made millions from his other deals and mainly from his TV work, but he invested millions of his own money into the restaurants, and the chain failed.

Thot Crimes said...

+1 @Sandy - Chefs shouldn't design their menus while high on cocaine, should probably be the take-away here.

Kimberley said...

@Craig - I went to his restaurant in Oxford when I lived there - it was the first Jamie's Italian restaurant to open. Good food, but nothing special. I do remember one of my friends stealing a Jamie's napkin from the table, oops.
But yeah, overpriced and mediocre food, plus there's too many other Italian eateries to compete with.

TruRes said...

Yeah, he may have been annoying, but I loved this and his cooking style.

Vita said...

I love reading these firsthand experiences of celeb chef restaurants (even if it may be after the fact in his case)

OKay said...

I read something indicating that his BIL (Jools' brother) was the financial "mastermind" behind the restaurant group and he failed miserably at his job.

I'd eat at a Jamie Oliver restaurant. Just about everything he makes is something I'd want to try. Wish he'd open a restaurant in Vegas just like everybody else. Maybe stop with all the high end Italian though, and go for simple food done well.

TamwellSully said...

Some real insider info right here- straight from the headlines.. wow, enty is really pathetic!

bootsy said...

It's very easy to make money from a company that fails. Whether Jamie Oliver actually did this is another matter. You simply extract money from the company via various forms of payments e.g. licenses, loans to directors etcetc the list goes on. which can leave the company as a complete shell. It happens all the time. If a well run business gets taken over by venture capitalists (which means the books are private) and then fails a few years after then it's very likely that this sort of thing has gone on. Good solid businesses don't suddenly turn bad in such a short amount of time.

Having said all that, the restaurant business is pretty cut throat. Most fail. Whether Oliver is profited or not is hard to tell. However he will have known that most restaurants fail, he's not dumb after all, and he will have had excellent financial advice given to him. So this is not an outlandish prospect at all. Not that we'll ever find out...

LondonGirl said...

Cheap nasty food, but overpriced to cash in on his name. People weren't that stupid, so it failed.

Anonymous said...

I've bought the Chef Ming products from HSN and they are extremely low quality to the point of being dangerous Chinese junk. I would not be surprised if this if him.

AlleyKat said...

And viz would be correct!

Bec said...

The restaurant group was a separate legal entity from his cook books and tv shows and appearance fees. This is lazy writing... Enty's a lawyer, he knows the different types of businesses can be kept separate - there's no story here.

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