Has Jamie bitten off more than he can chew? Angry staff being laid off, bad reviews, a £12.8million loss - and questions over the brother-in-law with a dodgy past running his empire 

Celebrating his 40th birthday at his London offices, Jamie Oliver’s eyes were brimming with tears. And who could blame the Essex-born chef for being overwhelmed by emotion?

Most of us would expect little more from our colleagues than a card, but Jamie’s apparently adoring staff had laid on a big surprise.

To kick off the occasion, in May, an actor dressed as Darth Vader — Oliver is an avid Star Wars fan — knocked on his door then led him down a street lined with fans in fancy dress.

Jame Oliver has built up a business empire worth £200million since he first burst onto our screens in 1999

The chef, pictured with his family, has expanded from television shows to cook books, restaurants and shops

The Town Crier of Chelmsford was in attendance, resplendent in his plumed hat and red coat, to proclaim the happy occasion.

Arriving at his nearby Fifteen restaurant in Islington, Jamie was met by his wife, Jools, and presented with an enormous tiered cake.

The celebration was in keeping with Jamie Oliver’s popular image. He likes to be seen as a family man, a benevolent employer and the nation’s conscience when it comes to healthy food for our children.

But in recent weeks, Jamie — and his restaurant empire, valued this summer by City investors at an estimated £200 million — has come under fire. His Jamie’s Italian restaurant chain, which has 42 branches in the UK and 22 overseas, is being attacked on two fronts: by disgruntled diners, who are denouncing the food and the service in online reviews; and by dissatisfied former staff, who have vented their anger on internet recruitment sites.

As if that were not enough, Jamie’s brother-in-law, Paul Hunt — a former City trader with a dubious past (he was fined in 1999 for insider trading), who has run the chef’s business empire since last year — is closing one of his ventures, leaving 44 employees facing redundancy at Christmas.

Perhaps this closure is not surprising, as accounts for his private company, Jamie Oliver Holdings, reveal that it ran up multi-million-pound losses last year. The group is undergoing a major overhaul, with underperforming divisions being ruthlessly axed.

Last year, he put brother-in-law Paul Hunt - a former city trader with a dubious past - in charge of the empire

But Oliver has come under fire in recent weeks, closing his final Recipease shop, meaning the loss of 40 jobs

It is hardly ‘lovely jubbly’ or ‘pukka’, to borrow Jamie’s favourite expressions.

Jamie’s kitchen skills, combined with his idyllic family life and social awareness, have made the one-time Naked Chef something of a national treasure.

Since finding fame in 1999 with his Naked Chef BBC TV show, Jamie has built an international restaurant empire, including his Barbecoa steakhouse in the City and Union Jacks, serving traditional British grub in Covent Garden, as well as his Italian chain.

His hugely successful media interests span the cookbooks, Jamie Magazine, his YouTube channel and a smartphone app downloaded by ten million people. Then there’s his branded food, such as Yellow Pepper and Pecorino Pesto Sauce, selling for £1.49 from Ocado.

Jamie is Britain’s second best-selling author after Harry Potter creator J. K. Rowling.

Not to be left out, his ex-model wife of 15 years, Jools, designs a clothes range for Mothercare.

The photogenic couple are often pictured surrounded by their four children: Poppy Honey, 13, Daisy Boo, 12, Petal Blossom, six, and Buddy Bear, five. In the past year or so, Jamie — with a new healthy cookbook to promote — has even slimmed through a diet of seaweed, eggs and nuts and no alcohol on week-nights.

However, despite this domestic harmony and enviable bank balance, the online backlash from customers and employees must have left a sour taste.

Oliver is Britain’s second best-selling author - with books like this - after Harry Potter creator J. K. Rowling

But his Recipease shops have not done well, and the last one, in Notting Hill, pictured, is now set to close

By expanding so ambitiously on so many fronts and putting his brother-in-law at the helm of his corporate empire, has Jamie finally has bitten off more than he can chew?

To the 44 employees at his Recipease cookery shop and restaurant in Notting Hill, West London, this is not an academic question.

Recipease, where a bottle of Capezzana olive oil costs £27.95, has fallen victim to cuts instigated by 52-year-old Paul Hunt (husband of Jamie’s sister, Anna-Marie) and is due to shut on Christmas Eve.

According to a Jamie Oliver spokesman, half the staff are expected to be employed elsewhere in the empire and all will be paid until the end of January. Even so, the festive sackings are at odds with Jamie’s public persona.

So, too, are the scathing comments from former employees — all anonymous — on two recruitment websites called Glassdoor and Indeed.

One former employee wrote on Indeed: ‘It is not the worst place to work — the team are great, but management are just abysmal. Very nasty, punishing staff with disciplinaries for being two minutes late. Very quick to punish but very slow to show gratitude.’

‘Worst job I ever had,’ said another, adding: ‘You felt incredibly undervalued. I left another job to work for the company, assuming it would be reliable, professional and fun. It is none of these things.’

Others slammed the chain for ‘terrible tips’ along with ‘low salary, horrible treatment by the managers’.

Jamie's Italian has also come under fire, with bad reviews from both customers and staff members

The company counters that only a ‘small percentage’ of its almost 2,900 restaurant staff are on the minimum wage, which ranges from £3.30 an hour for apprentices to £6.70 an hour for the over-21s. It also said they keep all their tips, unlike at some rival chains. Of course, one can find disaffected employees at any business and plenty of the comments posted on the recruitment sites are positive. For example, one former waitress at the Oxford branch of Jamie’s Italian praises the restaurant for being a ‘fun place to work’ with free staff food and good tips.

Nonetheless, the criticisms are damaging in the case of Jamie, who has become known as a champion of young people through his Fifteen restaurants, which provide apprenticeships for disadvantaged youths.

Despite having his name over the door of his Italian chain, Oliver is not involved in the day-to-day running of the restaurants or, indeed, the hands-on operation of his empire.

In July 2014, he delegated control of the commercial side to Hunt, who was installed on to the board of Jamie Oliver Holdings. With commendable family loyalty, Jamie describes Hunt as ‘a man of great integrity’. City regulators with long memories might disagree.

In 1999, Hunt was fined £60,000 and banned from trading for a year while working for Refco Overseas, the London arm of a U.S. futures broker.

He and four others were found guilty of ‘front-running’, a practice where traders take an order for shares that is big enough to move the market price, but — before placing the deal — buy the shares themselves and pocket a profit.

A spokesman for Oliver said that for the past 14 years Hunt has been ‘deemed as fit and proper’ to be the sole director of a company licensed by the Financial Services Commission and Financial Conduct Authority.

Jamie has bounced back in the past from setbacks, including the closure of three Union Jacks branches in 2014 and a temporary shutdown of his posh Barbecoa in-house butchery in the City of London

Hunt’s most recent employer before Jamie — the motorcycle insurance group Bikers’ Legal Defence — went into administration this autumn, albeit a year after he left.

Since he took the helm for Jamie, Hunt has taken a kitchen knife to costs and to under-performing parts of the empire. Businesses deemed to be peripheral to the Jamie Oliver philosophy — ‘to improve people’s lives by empowering them to make educated choices about food’ — seem to have been cast aside.

These included JME, a party business selling branded kitchen and homeware products, and Recipease.

Two branches of Recipease — a somewhat confused combination of cookery school, cafe and shop — in Brighton and Clapham, South-West London, have already closed, following complaints about high prices.

For example, a 90-minute course learning to cook Beef Wellington cost £140. That compares with £40 for a two-hour ‘one-dish workshop’ at fellow celebrity chef Rick Stein’s cookery school.

Axeing the operations has taken a heavy toll on group finances. Accounts for Jamie Oliver Holdings, filed in September, show it ran up a £12.8 million loss in 2014.

This was due to £18 million of supposedly one-off costs, which mainly consist of write-offs of £16.5 million of debts owed to Jamie Oliver Holdings by JME and Recipease.

In addition, a sum of £562,183 is listed as being owed by Fifteen Restaurant Ltd. ‘Like any fast-growth entrepreneurial business, there will be parts that don’t work out in the way we would have liked,’ says an insider. Or, as Jamie himself put it at a seminar in the summer: ‘I’ve wasted and f***ed up about 40 per cent of my ventures.’

Oliver's aides are keen to point out that sales in 2014 rose by just over 20 per cent to £39.7 million

Jamie has bounced back in the past from setbacks, including the closure of three Union Jacks branches in 2014 and a temporary shutdown of his posh Barbecoa in-house butchery in the City of London, after mould was found growing on carcasses in the chillers, along with mouse droppings.

His and Jules’s estimated £180 million fortune is more than enough to insulate them from these business woes.

Indeed, in an unorthodox move last year, they were handed a £10 million dividend by Jamie Oliver Holdings, in the form of their own plush five-bedroom house in North London’s Primrose Hill.

The property in the celebrity enclave, where residents include Kate Moss and Jude Law, was transferred at the behest of Hunt, ‘to tidy up the accounts’. Dividends are usually paid in cash or shares, not bricks and mortar.

The family house is understood to have been on the books of the business because Jamie had pledged it as security in the early days. ‘All taxes, which are substantial, have been paid in full,’ the firm said.

Aides are keen to point out that sales in 2014 rose by just over 20 per cent to £39.7 million.

This was due to an increase in income from TV and commercial productions, along with money flowing in from lucrative deals including being the ‘face’ of Canadian food retailer Sobeys and Australian grocer Woolworth.

But separate accounts for Jamie’s Italian Ltd show its profits before tax fell by £1.7 million to £3.9 million last year.

The company blamed two factors: the cost of opening new outlets and the fact the accounting period was one week shorter than in the previous year. The missing seven days, it claimed, made a big difference because they included New Year’s Eve, when takings were high.

Insiders insist trading has been good in recent months and that ‘the financials are in good shape’.

His and Jules’s estimated £180 million fortune is more than enough to insulate them from these business woes

Be that as it may, looking at feedback on reviews website TripAdvisor, the experiences of customers at Jamie’s Italian are mixed.

Take the York branch, which has an overall score of 3.5 out of five. Of 20 recent reviews, 12 are positive while eight are lukewarm or critical. ‘Really poor service for a restaurant that wasn’t busy,’ said one.

‘Dirty tables — food thrown at you when busy. Very sad as I really like JO!’ wrote another.

However, one happy customer wrote: ‘What a great meal and even better service.’

Of course, it would be a rare restaurant chain that was never criticised by customers, and there are many favourable remarks, too. The firm says complainers are a small minority of the hundreds of thousands of customers it serves.

The problem for Jamie is that, by putting his name over the door, he’s raised diners’ expectations. As an ardent campaigner for high-quality food, customers expect his outlets to be a cut above.

But as dining guru Peter Hardern, of Hardern’s Restaurant Guides, points out, Oliver is an anomaly among celebrity chefs because — unlike rivals Gordon Ramsay and Rick Stein — he has never run a truly top-class restaurant.

‘Jamie’s very good at playing the game, making friends with the right people, but in the end he was a sous-chef at the River Cafe in West London,’ says Hardern.

Hardern argues that there is ‘something inherently strange about applying your name to a chain of restaurants’.

He adds: ‘What exactly is it that you are bringing to a place by doing that? Yes, you can supervise the menu from afar but you are not cooking the food, so what is the real Jamie Oliver element in those places? In the end, it is marketing, pure and simple.’

Clearly, Recipease has not been a triumph and Jamie’s Italian might have gone off the boil, but the nation’s favourite Essex chef will no doubt fight to get his empire back on track.