Jamie Oliver signs new deal with Tesco after he made £10m as the face of Sainsbury’s food adverts 

Jamie Oliver signs new deal with Tesco after he made £10m being the face of Sainsbury’s food adverts

• Jamie Oliver has signed a new deal which will see him partner up with Tesco
• Will front supermarket’s healthy alternatives food scheme, ‘helpful little swaps’
• Last month he spoke out about company crisis which cost him £12.7m to save
• TV chef says problems were result of ‘perfect storm’ of factors, including Brexit 

Jamie Oliver has signed a new deal to partner with Tesco, seven years after leaving his £10million gig with supermarket rival Sainsbury’s.

The partnership aims to promote healthier options for shoppers and the London-based celebrity chef, 43, will front up Tesco’s new scheme of ‘helpful little swaps’.

Tesco says that a basket of healthier alternatives will cost 12 per cent less than a regular basket and products in the range have reduced levels of sugar, salt and fat. 

Oliver’s deal with Sainsbury’s (pictured), which ended in 2011, is considered one of the most successful celebrity partnerships in the industry, and was thought to have earned him more than £1 million a year

Oliver’s new role will also see him publish a series of healthier recipes and tips which will be available in store and online.

Many of the ingredients from the recipes will be reduced in price and placed together for convenience for customers – with a focus on British fruit and vegetables.

A recent survey of more than 2,000 people found that seven out of ten say they think supermarkets should do more to help people make healthier choices.

Oliver said: ‘I’m incredibly excited to be collaborating with Britain’s biggest and most progressive supermarket.

‘Over the past few years, under new leadership, Tesco has consistently raised the bar when it comes to so many important initiatives: from food waste, to leading on industry reformulation and helping kids eat more fruit with its brilliant Free Fruit for Kids in-store programme.

‘These survey results back up what I hear from my audience every single day – Britain wants to know how to enjoy more of the good stuff, in easy fun and delicious ways.’ 

Oliver’s deal with Sainsbury’s, which ended in 2011, is considered one of the most successful celebrity partnerships in the industry, and was thought to have earned him more than £1 million a year.

He previously said that he left Sainsbury’s because ‘I wanted my time back … to devote time to other things’. 

The Times reports that he had grown frustrated with ‘just doing adverts’ and that he would work with Tesco to create healthy recipes for customers, including vegetable quesadillas and kale and mushroom frittatas, which had the potential to ‘change eating habits’.

‘My Tesco’s job remit is completely different,’ he said. ‘I’m not doing adverts or being the ‘face of’ anything.’ The company did not confirm how much the deal was worth.

Last month Oliver told how he ploughed £12.7million of his own money into his struggling restaurant business in 2017 after being given two hours to save the chain.

Earlier this year, the TV chef announced he was closing 12 of his 37 Jamie’s Italian restaurants with 200 jobs affected.

He also came under fire for failing to pay suppliers after his upmarket steak restaurant Barbecoa crashed into administration.

Jamie Oliver has revealed he had to pump £12million of his own money into his struggling restaurant chain

Speaking about the crisis in an interview released in August, Oliver told the Financial Times Magazine: ‘I had two hours to put money in and save it or the whole thing would go to s*** that day or the next day… It was as bad as that and as dramatic as that.’

He revealed he initially plunged £7.5million from his own savings into his Italian restaurant chain, followed by a further £5.2million. The firm also took out £37million in loans from HSBC and other companies.

Oliver told the financial newspaper that his firm ‘simply run out of cash’ and raged at ‘people supposed to manage that stuff’.

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He said Brexit was among the number to factors which caused a ‘perfect storm’ for the company, as well as rental costs, local government rates and the increase in the minimum wage.

Barbecoa was said have owed £6.7million owed to creditors in the wake of the problems, although the group now insists everyone has been paid.

In the interview, Oliver defended his brother-in-law Paul Hunt from the criticism he received in the wake of business’s problems.

Earlier this year the group announced it was shutting 12 of its 37 Jamie’s Italian restaurants

Mr Hunt, who is married to Oliver’s sister Anna-Marie, was appointed to run Jamie Oliver Ltd in 2014.

He was described as an ‘arrogant, incompetent failure’ and ‘a City boy from central casting’ in the weeks after the financial issues.

But Oliver backed Mr Hunt, praising him as ‘honest and fair’ and insisting he had done a ‘fantastic job’ at the business.

He said Mr Hunt would go ‘at the right time’, but that he brought family members in because he trusted them not to steal from him.

Oliver seems to have won another of his battles today, after it emerged the government could ban the sale of energy drinks to children.

He has had led a high-profile campaign against junk food and its contribution to soaring childhood obesity in the UK.

The new restrictions will apply to drinks with more than 150mg of caffeine per litre, like popular brands Red Bull, Monster and Relentless.

Excessive consumption has been linked to a host of health and behaviour problems in children, from headaches to hyperactivity.

Oliver, pictured in a Sainsbury’s advert, previously said that he left the supermarket because ‘I wanted my time back … to devote time to other things’

 

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