Today’s papers all report how Jamie Oliver is to open his own chain of restaurants, Jamie’s Italian. Starting with an establishment in Bath next year, he’s aiming to build a collection – the word ‘chain’ is apparently frowned upon – of somewhere between 20 and 40 establishments (depending on which source you believe).
Jamie told the Guardian that “many of the chains [don’t] really give consistent quality at a decent price”, and that the aim is to “change all that”. And all at bargain prices too: “prices will start at £5 … and Oliver's people say that for £10 diners should get a ‘hearty meal’”.
The aim is laudable. But the omens for its realisation are less promising. Jamie Oliver may be a media phenomenon. But he has never run a restaurant kitchen of any particular note (which is why any comparisons which suggest some sort of equivalence between him and, say, Gordon Ramsay are absurd). And the only establishments with which he has been involved for any considerable length of time – the Fifteens in Hoxton and Cornwall – have mainly been notable for poor quality and overpricing.
For this new business venture on what is on any reckoning an ambitious scale – and which puts him head to head with the PizzaExpresses of the world – Oliver is putting up the sum of £500,000 (with another seven investors putting in, on average, £1 million each.)
Now, half a million quid is – in London, at least – pretty much an entry level investment for a single restaurant nowadays. Yet it’s apparently the total financial commitment that Jamie is making in the chain that’s to bear his name. For someone whose assets are apparently counted in the tens of millions, it’s hardly “betting the bank”.
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