He’s tackled the diets of a million Americans and the menus of schools across the UK, and now he has plans to add commercial property to his already heaving list of business ventures. Already the owner of three sites in London, Jamie Oliver is bringing his popular restaurant chain, Jamie’s Italian, to the corner of the Angel Building, a commercial property that houses office space for companies such as UK charity Cancer Research.
The restaurant will be open to tenants within the building, as well as the general public, and will be a radical departure from the usual office employee lunch of overcooked sloppy lasagne and warm cheese sandwiches (not together of course). Adding another string to his bow, Oliver has dared to tread where other celebrity chefs will inevitably follow – after all, once you’ve cracked the publishing world, the restaurant sector and the entertainment industry, what else can possibly be left but commercial property?
Already worth an estimated $172m, Oliver has recently been ranked as the second highest earning chef in the US, closely snapping at the heels of list-topper Wolfgang Puck; adding a venue in a commercial property to the Oliver Empire is sure to have a copycat effect amongst his culinary peers. The recent spate of ‘do-goodery’, brought to a television near you, started with Jamie’s Food Revolution (the campaign in which Oliver single-handedly brought down the humble Turkey Twizzler), continued with Hugh Fearnley-Whittingstall’s lone attempt to save fish from early extinction, and has now been topped by Raymond Blanc and his plans to bring back the great British orchard and numerous long-forgotten varieties of apple. You can’t argue with the fact that Oliver is most certainly a trendsetter – but what does his appearance in the commercial property sector mean for landlords?
Well, the presence of a celebrity chef is undoubtedly going to act as a huge draw for any prospective tenants of the Angel Building. There is a gargantuan difference between boasting that your premises house a Starbucks and a Burger King in comparison to Jamie’s Italian, home of the organic super-food. Given the choice, one can only assume that the majority of office workers would not be keen to pass up the opportunity of filling their lunch breaks with fine food.
