More than 40 employees at celebrity chef Jamie Oliver’s Notting Hill cookery shop are livid for getting sacked right before Christmas.
Staff at Recipease, which contains a cookery school, café and shop, will lose their jobs as the store is set to close its doors.
Employees claim Oliver has offered no olive branches to them.
A staff member told The Times: “Everyone here feels let down, particularly those like me who have worked a long time for Jamie and put everything into this shop.”
“Christmas is the worst time to lose your job. The management have been ruthless.”
They blamed his brother-in-law Paul Hunt, who managed Recipease’s day-to-day business, for their job losses.
A staff member said: “He has come into the business and made lots of changes and we are the just the latest victims.”
In a statement, a spokesman for Oliver said: “Over the last year, the Jamie Oliver Group has made the decision to focus on core businesses and this has meant streamlining the company in certain areas.
“As part of this effort, the group has decided to close the last Recipease store in Notting Hill. The store will remain open until the end of the year while we do our best to find opportunities elsewhere in the business for employees.
“Whilst the Notting Hill site is not the right premises for us, we do hope to reopen the cookery classes in a more appropriate location.
“The cookery classes remain core to the Jamie Oliver philosophy of empowering people to make educated choices about food and we will update when we have something to announce.”
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