Jamie Oliver has blamed his 2019 restaurant collapse on his inability to grasp the fundamentals of maths.
Acclaimed British celebrity chef Jamie Oliver has admitted he believed that being “conceptually thick” was a key factor in why his restaurant empire began to collapse.
The chef, 50, joined fellow television personality Davina McCall on her Begin Again podcast to discuss his life and career. He admitted that he never passed maths at school, and that his failure to understand lead to the downfall of his restaurant portfolio.
In 2019, Oliver was forced to close 22 of his restaurants, including Jamie’s Italian, Fifteen and Barbecoa, after debts reached approximately GBP 83 million (NZD 191 million), and resulted in the job losses for almost 1000 staff.
He reiterated that the closures were not due to poor service or the quality of food, but his inability to grasp the fundamentals of business.
“Sometimes I’ve failed and I got all the hard bits right and I got the basics wrong because I spent a lifetime refusing to accept any responsibility around numbers and maths... I didn’t pass maths at school,” said Oliver.
“Conceptually within that, yeah, I’m thick. I have a negative view of myself when it comes to maths.”
Oliver currently owns over 70 restaurants across the world through his company, Jamie Oliver Group. His restaurant brands include Jamie Oliver’s Pizzeria, Jamie’s Deli, and Jamie Oliver’s Diner. Since the collapse of his empire, he has rebuilt the restaurant portfolio both domestically in the UK and internationally. Some markets he has entered include Bali, Dubai and Kuala Lumpur.
The television personality has also found success in producing his own range of kitchenware, Jamie Oliver Cookware.
“So when I lost my restaurants, you know, all the hard stuff we got right, all the stuff that most people struggle getting right, we got right. We were really good at the hard stuff, and it was really the basics.”
It was reported at the time of the closures that Oliver had paid staff salaries from his personal bank account.
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