Jamie Oliver preparing to sell Barbecoa chain

Jamie Oliver is considering selling his barbecue-based restaurant concept Barbecoa amid continuing tough trading conditions, the company has confirmed.

Barbecoa has two venues; one in Piccadilly and a second in St Paul’s

As reported by the BBC, the celebrity chef is in the process of having the business value with a view to selling it off.

Jamie Oliver Restaurant Group said: “We have instructed a firm of real estate experts to ascertain the potential value and market suitability of two of our sites.”

Barbecoa was set up by Jamie Oliver and his friend American barbecue expert Adam Perry Lang in 2011 and has two outlets in London; one in Piccadilly and another in St Paul’s.

The Piccadilly branch was relaunched in February 2017, while a Barbecoa butchery alongside the St Paul’s branch was forced to close for 24 hours in May 2014 after hygiene inspectors gave it their lowest rating branding it “hazardous”. The butcher’s shop reopened after the issues raised were addressed.

If the restaurants are sold, 160 jobs will be affected, according to the Telegraph.

The Jamie Oliver Restaurant Group has already been working to cut costs in other areas of the business, and had already announced the planned closure of 12 of his Jamie’s Italian restaurants after court documents revealed that Jamie’s Italian had debts of £71.5m.

The chain had already closed down six Jamie’s Italian restaurants in January 2017. At the time, the company said that the closures were due to uncertainties over Brexit and a “tough” market.

It is a sign of the increasingly challenging market faced by restaurateurs in London, with a number of high profile restaurants closing this year.

In January, burger chain Byron announced that it was planning to close 20 Byron burger restaurants. Elsewhere the wine-focused 8 Hoxton Square in Hoxton was among the first London restaurant casualties of 2018, followed by brothers Chris and Jeff Galvin’s much loved Galvin Bistrot de Luxe in Marylebone, who said it had lost a fifth of its staff in the wake of the Brexit vote.

Other high profile closures of 2017 included HKK in Shoreditch, Paradise Garage in Bethnal Green, L’Autre Pied in Marylebone, and, most recently the Kensington Roof Gardens in High Street Kensington, which closed in January after 37 years in business.