The U.K.’s vote to leave the E.U. started kneecapping its once-booming restaurant industry practically on day one, and today Jamie Oliver says his empire of Italian eateries is the latest to be victimized by Brexit. Six Jamie’s Italian restaurants in England and Scotland will shut their doors in the next three months, the Guardian reports; Jamie Oliver Restaurant Group CEO Simon Blagden explains that “every restaurant owner knows” it’s murder out there right now, and that “post-Brexit the pressures and unknowns have made it even harder.”
Those six locations represent less than 5 percent of the chain’s sales and workforce, and Blagden says they’ll try to offer those employees jobs at other Jamie’s restaurants. High costs for sourcing products like olive oil and training staff plus a drop in foot traffic have made the branches “quite unsustainable,” a rep says. Oliver’s food and business acumen, of course, have had their share of critics over the years, which probably explains why so many British people have found maybe the one thing they actually feel bad about blaming on Brexit:
