Jamie Oliver’s telly and cookbook empire raked in a whopping £65,753 a day last year despite lockdown woes.
Accounts for his parent firm Jamie Oliver Holdings Ltd showed the firm turned over £24m and made a pre tax profit of £1.68m for 2020.
A report sent to Companies House said the firm had enjoyed a good year but social distancing and lockdowns had “negatively impacted our restaurant franchises”.
He has eateries at Gatwick Airport plus places abroad that are operated under his name.
His accountants for JOH Ltd revealed: “We have successfully delivered new Jamie Oliver titles in both book and TV formats during the year and there has been a continued strong performance from back catalogue book titles, ongoing revenue flows from our endorsements contracts and our international distributor Freemantle.”
The figures said £18.3 million of the income came from “royalties, endorsements and licensing income”, £3.9m from “production income” and £1.5m in from franchise deals.
Almost £9 million was paid out in wages to 151 workers.
Jamie closed his restaurants with the loss of more than 1,000 jobs in May 2019 after profits plunged.
The telly chef has paid out around £15million in total from his coffers to try and keep the chain afloat but the true debts of the enterprise are put at around £83 million.
Jamie is still worth an estimated £100million thanks to his lucrative TV and cookbook deals.
He said of the collapse: “We had simply run out of cash.
“And we hadn’t expected it. That is just not normal, in any business. You have quarterly meetings. You do board meetings. People supposed to manage that stuff should manage that stuff.
“I honestly don’t know. We’re still trying to work it out, but I think that the senior management we had in place were trying to manage what they would call the perfect storm: rents, rates, the high street declining, food costs, Brexit, increase in the minimum wage. There was a lot going on.”
Jamie recently slated other big-name cooks for caring more about their ego than normal folk being able to follow their recipes.
He ranted: “As a man and a chef you have got to have a massive scrap with your ego and look at how many chefs’ books are rubbish. It is because they cannot get out of the restaurant, out of control and ego.
“For me, you have to beat that person up and throw them to the side.
“My audience is very mainstream. My job is to be clear. You do your job and break it down into chapters that are logical and useful.”
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Source: Celebrities - dailystar.co.uk