Money blog: Big-name chefs have had a terrible year - but Jason Atherton is fighting back (2024)

ByJimmy Rice, Money blog editor

Jason Atherton is not getting much sleep.

Hardly a week has gone by this year without another big-name chef closing a restaurant amid rising costs, staff shortages and a sense the public isn't willing to blow out on high-end food the way they used to.

Marco Pierre White, Michel Roux Jr, Marcus Wareing, Monica Galetti, Simon Rimmer and Tom Brown have all announced closures, and yet it is openings that are keeping Atherton awake.

Five of them, all in London, in as many months.

"I've bet my whole life on this," Atherton tells Money, already on his third coffee when we sit down at 10am with the intention, at least from the interviewer's perspective, of answering one question: What does it take to succeed in hospitality in 2024?

"I'm no culinary messiah," he says. "I'm not going to sit here and say come and follow me, I have the magic recipe. No one does.

"Hospitality is in a downturn, everyone knows it's pretty tough out there, but in downturns there are also opportunities.

"If you are brave, believe in yourself, there are really good opportunities to work with landlords on failed sites, to get good rents."

To cut costs further, Atherton has taken to renegotiating prices with his suppliers every week.

"It's very time-consuming but that's what it takes, every Monday we have deals done on our meat, our fish, our chemicals, our vegetables, pinning it all down."

Gordon Ramsay paid me £250k - those days are gone

It was Gordon Ramsay who gave Atherton his first opportunity to open a restaurant, Maze, in the heart of Mayfair, in 2005.

His chef patron salary was £250,000 and the restaurant - awarded a Michelin star within a year - peaked at a turnover of £14m.

"Those days are gone," Atherton says. "It was a different time.

"For now, gone are the days of bringing in an international designer, paying them millions of pounds to design this incredible restaurant that looks like something from the future."

At the newly opened Sael near Piccadilly Circus, the setting for the interview, Atherton has recycled much of the decor from the previous restaurant incumbent.

"Right now my mantra is buckling down, watching costs and going back to cooking for Londoners who are more frugal with their spending power," he says.

And so down the road at Mary's, once home to Atherton's one-starred Pollen Street Social, you can now get a "Cumbrian beef dirty" smash burger for £16.50, while his "elegant" Harrods Social eatery has been replaced by a concession in the store's Dining Hall, where gourmet hot dogs are served for £19.

Not exactly cheap, but not as out of reach as some of his previous and existing ventures.

A £3.2m mistake

If Atherton is keen to not come across as someone who thinks they're a "messiah", it's because he knows what failure tastes like. In 2016, he spent £3.2m building the upscale Japanese restaurant Sosharu, then another million keeping it alive for two and a half years before accepting its demise.

"I was the golden boy, I could do no wrong, and then all of a sudden I got it completely wrong," he says, before recounting his litany of mistakes: overstaffing, not doing any market research and "putting a Mayfair restaurant in Clerkenwell".

"Life is really tough," he says. "The way I look at failure is: it's just a learning curve. If I open 10 restaurants and two fail, I've won, but you don't just brush the two failures under the carpet. We rip it apart, we examine them, we want to understand why they happened, and use that as a mini-university of restaurateuring."

A joke going round

There's a joke going around culinary circles that Atherton’s prolificacy is rivalling Brexit in the impact it is having on staffing in London, given he's snaffled hundreds of young waiters, chefs and others all in one city, all at once.

Across the five new restaurants - which will take Atherton's stable to 17 worldwide - he and wife Irha expect to be employing around 250 staff, and that's not taking into account the work they're sending the way of national restaurant reviewers, with Grace Dent and Jay Rayner among those to have already shared their experiences in print.

Despite new visa rules that are deterring a lot of the young Europeans on whom the service industry had come to depend, Atherton says the problem isn't finding staff.

"The biggest challenge is loyalty," he says. "Because there are a lot of opportunities out there, people know if they're not really enjoying it, rather than sticking with it like we did in the old days, they can leave the next day and get another job the following day. I call it the social media attention span."

He's aware how this might sound - an elder statesman of the industry bemoaning the generations that followed - but his view of Gen Z is more rounded.

"It's a different time, and we have to fit into them," he says. "I get some amazing talent that comes through and we nurture that.

"These kids are very creative. I have a very young workforce and I love their creativity. I love that they push us on TikTok, on social media, very powerful tools that I don't understand."

'They made me stand in a wheelie bin for the whole lunch service'

After a brief stint in the Army Catering Corps, Atherton did most of his growing up in some of the toughest kitchens in the world, even before joining the Ramsay group in 2001.

"There are many worse things, but I threw away some langoustines once and I had to go stand in a wheelie bin for the whole lunch service, with the langoustines," he recalls. "It took me a week to get the smell of fish out of my shoes."

Atherton inherited these at-times impossibly high standards, running tough kitchens himself as he stepped out of Ramsay's shadow and earned Michelin stars with his own The Social Company.

Has an adjustment been required to manage a generation who've grown up with a different mindset, different values - or, at the age of 53, has he simply mellowed?

"A bit of both," he says. "When you start to develop real skills, and the people around you don't have those skills, when you're younger you can take that as incompetence, which it's not - you learn that as you get older."

'We have responsibility to new generation of chefs'

Stories abound of chefs having to work 16 or 18-hour shifts when Atherton started out.

These days, as the industry slowly embraces the concept of a work-life balance, his chefs can choose between 40-hour and 48-hour contracts.

"Our industry has a really bad reputation of overworking, overstressed, undernourished, underpaid, and it's my generation's job to get rid of that so the next generation isn't burdened by it, because my generation was."

There's a question about how compatible this is with other goals: Michelin stars (Atherton's Row on 45 in Dubai just claimed its second) and, ultimately in this climate, survival.

"At the same time, I don't suffer fools," he says. "I'm here to work, I'm here to deliver for my customers. The company has got a lot of debt around its neck and we have to repay that."

'There are too many fine dining restaurants'

As well as Mary's and those gourmet hot dogs, Atherton is launching Three Darlings, a bistro in Chelsea named in honour of his daughters, and he's just opened Sael, his "love letter to Britain".

These will hit a price point somewhere between the £16.50 burgers and what will be his final opening in the run, the flagship Row on 5 on Savile Row, where diners can expect to pay nearer £200 a head for a "culinary journey" across 15 courses that are eaten in different parts of the building.

Atherton knows the latter is a risk as customers and the industry are "moving away from super expensive restaurants".

Is there even a future for the kind of fine-dining establishments in which he made his name?

"The market is saturated, there's too many," he says. "You've either got to be the very, very best in the world or you don't survive.

"For me, it's about can I operate at that level, with a team, for the last chance in my life - that's the dream and we're gonna give it our best shot."

Alongside him at Row on 5 will be the prodigious Spencer Metzger, enticed from The Ritz, whom Atherton describes as a "generational talent" on the global food scene.

Metzger, who blew away a host of the country's best chefs to win Great British Menu in 2022, could end up as a 50% shareholder in the business if certain financial targets are met as Atherton considers life after the pass.

So could he soon be joining the likes of Wareing, another Ramsay alumnus, in stepping back completely from the industry?

"This is going to be my last fine dining restaurant," he said.

"You heard that here first."

ByJimmy Rice, Money blog editor

We begin our overview of the week with a report on pension lump sums that will have caused some concern among those approaching retirement.

Currently, the tax-free lump sum most people over 55 can take from their pension pot is 25%, up to a maximum of £268,275. But the government has reportedly asked a major UK pension provider to look into the impact of cutting that amount to £100,000.

Groups including the Institute for Fiscal Studies and the Fabian Society argue the tax-free lump sum should be reduced because it benefits the wealthiest.

All this speculation has apparently led to an increase in inquiries to financial advisers from those looking to take their money before the budget.

But we heard from Ross Lacey, director and chartered financial planner at Fairview Financial Management, who advises his clients not to make any "rash decisions".

"Historically, any changes made by government on things like this have included transitional protection, so that those who would already be affected by the new rules keep whatever rights they currently have," he said.

Sticking with the forthcoming budget, and on Wednesday Sir Keir Starmer refused to rule out increases to national insurance for employers.

A key tenet of the Labour Party's manifesto was promising to not raise national insurance, VAT and income tax.

But when asked by Conservative leader Rishi Sunak if the commitment on national insurance applied to both employer and employee contributions, Sir Keir dodged the question...

The other Money story that could have ramifications well beyond this week came yesterday when the Employment Rights Billwas introduced into parliament.

Business correspondent Paul Kelso's analysis is well worth a read...

Measures in the bill include:

• The right to statutory sick pay from the first day of illness, ending the three-day waiting period, and removing the lower earnings limit;
• Protection from unfair dismissal from the first day of their employment, ending the existing two-year qualifying period;
• Day-one rights to paid and unpaid paternity leave. Currently fathers have to be employed for 26 or 52 weeks respectively to receive the benefits, and there will be a new statutory right to bereavement leave;
• The right to flexible working. Where employers say no they will have to demonstrate the decision is reasonable against eight criteria;
• A ban on "exploitative zero hours contracts". Workers on zero or short-hours contracts will have to be offered a contract based on the hours worked in a 12-week reference period, receive notice of shift patterns and entitlement to payment for short-notice cancellation;
• A statutory probation period of up to nine months for new hires, during which staff can be dismissed under a "lighter touch" process.

A consultation required means officials do not expect the measures to reach the statute book until autumn 2026 at the earliest.

Finally, here are three essential Money reads from the week...

We'll be back with live updates on Monday morning - and don't forget our Saturday long read, an interview with multiple Michelin-star chef and Gordon Ramsay disciple Jason Atherton on what it takes to succeed in the industry - amid a swathe of closures - in 2024, published from 8am tomorrow.

The number of households unable to pay their mortgage has risen in the last few months, and it's expected to get worse in the run-up to Christmas.

It comes as a few lenders, notably Coventry and Co-operative Bank, withdraw their lowest rates or announcing hikes (you can see our full mortgage guide here).

However, defaults for non-mortgage-related lending (such as credit cards) have decreased in recent months, and banks and building societies expect this to remain unchanged, according to the Bank of England’s Credit Conditions Survey.

Lenders also reported the length of interest-free periods for balance transfers has increased in the past few months, and is expected to increase slightly in the coming few months.

Sarah Coles, head of personal finance at Hargreaves Lansdown, said: "Mortgage default rates are mounting, and we've not yet reached the peak. Banks expect them to be up again by the end of the year.

"Given that those on lower incomes don't tend to have mortgages, it demonstrates that higher mortgage rates are hitting middle earners hard.

"Anyone who has overstretched themselves in the property market, or took on too many fixed costs while mortgage rates were lower, has faced a Herculean task when they remortgaged."

If you're getting a ticket for tomorrow's Lotto draw, you may want to pick these numbers...

New research from casinorevisor.com has revealed the luckiest and unluckiest numbers to use.

The casino experts examined Lotto data between October 2015 and September 2024 to look at which balls were drawn the most frequently: those that appeared most often were deemed the luckiest, while those with the lowest frequency were the unluckiest.

The study found that 37and 52 shared first place as the luckiest numbers - both were selected in the winning draw 115 times.

Meanwhile, if you have 6 or 30 you have some of the unluckiest numbers available - both have only been drawn 83 times.

Lotto, renamed from the National Lottery, began in 1994 when players could originally choose six numbers from 1 to 49 or have their numbers randomly selected.

In October 2015, the ball pool was expanded from 49 to 59.

Franz Ostendorff, gambling expert and author of casinorevisor.com, said if you pick numbers based on birthdays, you could be missing out.

"If you choose your own numbers instead of opting for a random selection, it may be in your best interest to avoid choosing numbers significant to a loved one's birthday, which is a common choice for many lottery players," he said.

"Choosing numbers based on birthdays prevents you from playing with numbers higher than 31 - but more than half of the study's luckiest numbers are higher than this.

"Additionally, over half of the unluckiest numbers are within the range 1-31, further suggesting that selecting numbers of a higher value could increase your chance of winning big."

Hundreds of thousands of people who were entitled to receive pension credit worth £1.5bn did not claim it last year, government figures show.

Data from the Department for Work and Pensions shows up to 760,000 pensioner households were entitled to receive pension credit in the financial year ending in 2023.

This was lower than the financial year ending in 2022, however, when up to 870,000 households who were entitled did not claim.

Figures show up to £1.5bn of available pension credit went unclaimed in the financial year ending in 2023 - a decrease from the estimate of up to £2bn that went unclaimed the year before.

There was also a rise in pension credit claims in the weeks after the government announced restrictions on who would receive winter fuel payments in July.

Sir Keir Starmer and Chancellor Rachel Reeves are looking to save money by withdrawing the winter fuel payment from millions of pensioners, with only those claiming pension credit viable for the stipend.

Before winter, Labour is trying to encourage as many people as possible who are eligible for the credit to sign up.

By Emily Mee, news reporter

If you've been hit by a dramatic increase in your insurance premium over the past year or two, join the club.

Car insurance premiums have rocketed - by as much as 58% in 12 months, Confused.com data earlier this year suggested. It put the average policy at a whopping £995 (up from £366 a year before).

Insurers have been citing heightened labour and repair costs, increased car use post-COVID, a shortage of microchips, higher second hand car values, and the Ukraine war.

But no one really knows how insurance companies work out their pricing.

"It's so complex and big, no one really understands how it works unless you're in the industry," says consumer expert Scott Dixon, also known as The Complaints Resolver.

What can you do?

Although insurance premium pricing remains murky, Scott has some tips for getting the cost down - including some tips even seasoned hagglers may not have heard before...

Perfecting the art of the haggle - including on admin fee

Your first port of call is to haggle your current insurance company down - it's less hassle, and you can play on the loyalty factor.

Mr Dixon says you should come prepared by getting quotes from elsewhere online, and "never accept the first offer".

"Just say 'is that the best you can do?' - but with a smile on your face," he says.

"You're dealing with real people at the end of the day so you get what you give."

You may be put on hold while they "speak to a manager" - something that Scott says is a "usual ploy" before they go a bit lower.

Another thing most people don't realise is they can waive the annoying £25 admin fee to renew their policy.

Scott points out it "doesn't cost £25 to push a button", so he suggests asking the company to waive the fee as a "gesture of goodwill" - making sure to point out you've been with the company for X number of years.

Use a cashback site

Some cashback sites, such as Quidco or TopCashBack, will offer cashback on your insurance premiums.

Scott says he saved £36 doing this previously, while our own cost of living specialist Megan Harwood-Baynes saved £40.

Don't just auto-renew

This is the most obvious one - but it can be easy to miss the reminder email telling you your policy is up for renewal.

To avoid this, make a diary note to start checking for renewal quotes 21 days before your insurance expires (this is also the sweet spot for when you're likely to get the best price).

Pay your car insurance annually

It can be 30% cheaper to pay annually rather than monthly - but of course, not everyone will have a lump sum to hand.

Scott suggests that to get around this, you could set up a 0% credit card to pay the annual premium, and then set up a direct debit to split it into monthly repayments.

Secure your car

If you've made changes to your car to protect it from theft - such as fitting an immobiliser or steering or handbrake lock - you may have your premium reduced if you tell your insurer about it.

You may also get a discount for fitting a dashcam.

Change your job title

Some jobs seem to attract higher premiums than others.

While you should be honest with your insurer as being untruthful can invalidate your policy, that doesn't mean you can't tweak your job title slightly.

Bundle your home and car insurance policy

Many insurers will offer a discount if you combine your car insurance policy with one that protects your home, Scott says.

Limit your mileage

If you can keep this down, you will be considered a lower risk.

Again, don't lie about this as it can easily be checked online on the UK government's MOT history check.

Consider a black box policy

You will need to have a device fitted to monitor your driving style and speed.

This can work out cheaper for many people - but be aware that your policy may increase if you drive erratically, or late at night or early in the morning.

Downgrade your car

This might not be the most appealing option, but if you go for a cheaper car with a smaller engine, you can cut costs dramatically.

Think about whether you need extras

Scott says many companies are moving towards "Ryanair-style pricing" - aka tacking on extra costs to your original quote.

Some extras may not be needed. For example, some car dealerships will offer free breakdown cover with each annual service.

Banks can also offer extras that you don't need to duplicate.

Pay a higher excess

While this will cost you more in the event of a collision, it can bring down your insurance premium.

By Daniel Binns, business reporter

Sainsbury's has been the big loser during early trading on the stock market this morning.

The company is down more than 5% after its largest shareholder, the Qatar Investment Authority (QIA), announced it was selling £306m worth of its shares in the supermarket giant.

Before today, Qatar's sovereign wealth fund held a 14.2% stake in Sainsbury's, with the sell-off representing about 5% of its holding.

Analysts said the move did not appear to be linked to the supermarket's next set of interim results next month or the upcoming budget.

The QIA has been selling off its shares since 2021 after reportedly abandoning a potential bid in the company.

Also down is oil giant BP, which has slipped 0.4% after it warned that weak refining margins would dent its third-quarter profits.

Elsewhere, the markets are pretty flat.

The FTSE 100 is currently on zero growth, while the FTSE 250 has risen by just over 0.1%.

Housebuilding firm Vistry Group and Endeavour Mining are the main gainers but are only up just over 1%.

On the currency markets, £1 buys $1.30 or €1.19.

A barrel of the benchmark Brent crude oil is priced at just over $78 (£60), up 1%. Prices have been yo-yoing recently over fears of escalating violence in the Middle East and contrasting worries of a dampening in demand in China.

The UK's economy grew by 0.2% in August, according to official figures.

The slight rise in gross domestic product - which is intended as a measurement of a country's total output - comes aftertwo successive months of stagnation.

The figures from the Office for National Statistics were in line with the forecasts of economists polled by the Reuters news agency, who predicted growth would be 0.2%.

Liz McKeown, from the ONS, said: "All main sectors of the economy grew in August, but the broader picture is one of slowing growth in recent months, compared to the first half of the year."

Rachel Reeves, the chancellor, who is preparing to deliver her first budget at the end of the month, said it is "welcome news that growth has returned to the economy".

"Growing the economy is the number one priority of this government so we can fix the NHS, rebuild Britain and make working people better off," she said.

Business correspondent Paul Kelsosays the news is"not stellar, but it's welcome".

"There's a great deal of focus on the state of the economy and the public finances, as the chancellor wrestles with what she's going to put in her first budget," he says.

Investors from around the world are heading to the City of London for an investment summit on Monday, so this news is "not bad timing" and the government will be "hoping to attract private investment from around the world", he adds.

Every Friday we take an overview of the mortgage market, hearing from industry voices and getting a round-up of the best rates courtesy of the independent experts at Moneyfactscompare.co.uk.

The most eye-catching news of the week, after months of mortgages rates sliding down, was a few lenders, notably Coventry and Co-operative Bank, withdrawing their lowest rates or announcing hikes.

The escalating conflict in the Middle East, which could affect oil prices and therefore inflation, is creating some uncertainty.

Moneyfacts finance expert Rachel Springall explains: "Over recent days we have seen a rise in swap rates. The uncertainties surrounding future interest rates, such as mixed messages from Bank of England regarding base rate, combined with wider economic uncertainties have their parts to play in lenders pricing decisions.

"Fixed mortgage rates typically follow swaps relatively closely, so any volatility can be an indicator on where rates will go next, but it may be a little too soon to tell how this could impact the market overall."

One factor that could come into play - and potentially prevent hikes being too pronounced - is the timing of all this.

"Each lender will have their own end of year targets to consider and could choose to hold steadfast if they are not priced too low in the present market," says Springall.

This is in line with what we saw with Barclays yesterday, with mainly small improvements to rates but some increases on selected products.

Overall, it's not a time to be too panicked, says David Hollingworth, associate director at L&C Mortgages and Money blog regular.

"This isn't anything like the kind of volatility that we have seen on occasions in the last couple of years," he says.

"Rates aren't likely to spin out of control and it's more a case of understanding that what may have looked like continual cuts to rates may not maintain the same pace.

"Interest rates are still expected to fall and all eyes will be on the inflation data next week."

This week, Moneyfacts has looked at the best rates on offer for home movers...

Moneyfacts also rounds up what it calls "best buys", which look beyond the lowest rates and takes in incentives and fees...

Two other updates of note on the housing market were reported on here in Money. You can read them here...

ByMegan Harwood-Baynes, cost of living specialist

eBay has launched its first beauty advent calendar, which promises to be filled with more than £250 worth of products - but is that the case?

We looked behind the advent calendar doors to see if it lived up to the promises...

The pros

In total, we managed to find everything on the list for £225 - this doesn't include any additional discounts some websites offer (Look Fantastic is pretty good at always having some kind of active discount code).

But, at a price of £49.99 for the whole calendar, that's still a pretty good bargain.

There are other plusses: eBay seems to source products from surplus stocks that would otherwise have gone to landfill, plus it is done in support of the Hygiene Bank, a charity dedicated to ending hygiene poverty in the UK.

The cons

There's a reason many of these items are surplus stock. When I was costing it up, there were plenty of people reselling them on eBay fairly cheaply.

And while eBay is still on the cheaper end of beauty calendars (Liberty sell theirs for £260 and Space NK's goes for £250), it is still almost £50 at a very expensive time of year.

You should also ask: are you really going to use 20-something tiny products?

For £50, you could buy a couple of full-sized products you already love and still donate to the Hygiene Bank.

But if you are tempted, have a look before buying to make sure it contains products you will use.

Is it safe to buy cosmetics from eBay?

Lots of people do without issues.

If you're worried, perhaps only buy items that are brand new in the box. If they arrive and it looks like the seal has been tampered with, or the product used, considering chucking it straight in the bin and reporting the seller.