Jamie Oliver and his wife Jools took home £2m less in 2024 as profit slipped at the TV chef’s business empire.
The couple paid themselves a dividend of £500,000 for the year, down from the £2.5m they received for 2023.
That figure was significantly lower than the £6.8m they took home in 2022.
A spokesperson for the Jamie Oliver Group said at the time that the £6.8m dividend had been approved after profits rose by 17.5 per cent to £7.7m in 2022.
New accounts filed with Companies House have now revealed that the group’s pre-tax profit fell from £3.5m to £3.1m in 2024 while its turnover increased from £27m to £28.5m.
The business includes all of Jamie Oliver’s media interests such as TV and digital production, book publishing, endorsements and royalty streams.
Jamie Oliver’s group creates jobs
From royalties, endorsements and licensing, the group’s turnover fell from £18.3m to £17.6m in 2024.
Its income from production also declined from £3.7m to £2.1m.
However, its turnover from owned and operated restaurants surged from £335,983 to £3.6m.
Its cookery school income rose from £986,433 to £1m while franchise turnover went from £3.6m to £3.7m.
A statement signed off by the board said: “The principal drivers of this decrease in profitability were reduced revenue from the effects of the cyclical nature of long-term partnerships contracts, partially offset by savings in central staff costs (excusing owned and operated sites).
“We have 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 and our international television content distributor.”
During the year the average number of people employed by the group increased from 166 to 235.
Jamie Oliver’s restaurant empire collapsed in 2019 with the loss of 1,000 jobs.
However, he still has around 70 restaurants around the world run by franchise partners.