Jamie Oliver has appointed advisers to find potential partners to help to fund the next stage of the turnaround of his struggling restaurant empire.
The television chef, who has admitted that his Jamie’s Italian chain came within hours of collapse in 2017, has hired Alix Partners to advise on a search for private equity funding or a trade backer to kickstart expansion after two years of retrenchment.
To save the chain, Oliver, 43, had to inject £13m of his own wealth and put the business through a company voluntary arrangement, a form of insolvency, to facilitate the closure of a dozen loss-making outlets while securing rent reductions of 30% on another eight.
