Gino D’Acampo: Restaurant empire’s huge debts revealed before rescue
The company behind TV chef Gino D’Acampo’s restaurant empire owed more than £11m as it collapsed into administration, it has been revealed.
Upmarket Leisure Ltd, which controlled the former This Morning star’s venues, was served with a wind-up petition by HMRC in March and moved to appoint an administrator before being saved in a £5m deal in May.
The deal secured the jobs of all 400 staff at restaurants in London, Leeds, Liverpool, Newcastle and Manchester.
According to its latest set of financial accounts, for the 12 months to the end of March 2023, Upmarket Leisure’s losses widened from £559,000 to almost £1.5m. At the time, it owed creditors nearly £6m.
Manchester-based Upmarket Leisure was established in 2021 and was majority owned by Steven Walker and former JD Sports CEO, Peter Cowgill.
How much did Gino D’Acampo’s restaurant empire owe?
Now, a new document filed with Companies House by administrators Begbies Traynor has revealed how much the Gino D’Acampo’s firm owed when it collapsed and how it came to be in that position.
According to Begbies Traynor, Cowgill was owed more than £2.6m as of April 2025 while fellow secured creditor Simon Clarke was owed almost £1.6m.
Both secured creditors have been paid in full following the rescue of the business.
HMRC was owed more than £4.2m, of which it is expected to receive a portion of the money back.
Begbies Traynor added that unsecured creditors are estimated to be owed £3m.
How did the company collapse?
In the document filed with Companies House, Upmarket Leisure’s directors said the firm’s 2024/25 financial was forecasted to be “significantly better” than the actual performance.
The directors added that the rationale behind the forecast “seemed sensible at the time” and was produced based on the previous year’s performance in existing locations as well as the development projects that were in the pipeline.
They said: “An unusual spring and summer of weather and a widespread ‘gloomy’ economic environment compounded by ever increasing operating costs were the main reasons for the poor sales and profitability levels vs our forecast and previous year’s results.”
The directors added that are than £2m was invested into new sites and the development of existing locations and “several costs were exacerbated” due to build delays and other external factors “outside of our control”.
A re-forecast was produced near the halfway point of the financial year which included reducing sales expectations and cutting costs – including slashing central and head office costs by 50 per cent.
The directors said said this was achieved by director pay cuts, not paying executive fees, a recruitment freeze, reduced working weeks and salaries, redundancies and the deployment of people in head office to vacant positions across its locations.
It was also agreed that Gino D’Acampo would waive his brand fees for 12 months.
In January this year, the company was waiting for £2.4m in funding from a second investor which included an initial £500,000 cash injection by the end of that month.
The business had “traded well” over Christmas and “had managed to catch up on a lot of creditor arrears including staying on top of the current liabilities falling due to HMRC”.
In early February, “there was a swathe of negative national and local press around Gino D’Acampo relating to his TV career, which lasted for many weeks and begun to negatively impact the sales of the restaurants”.
The directors added: “This has continued impacting sales as well as management focus, although in recent weeks, sales have almost recovered to where they were prior to the negative press starting.”
They also said that a prospective new hotel partner paused on a new site in Bath due to the negative press.
Upmarket Leisure’s directors had also embarked on its first international location in Malta with Melia.
The project was delayed by more than a year and led to extra outgoings for pre-opening and other exceptional costs.
The directors said it was decided that the project was not possible “for us to do under a lease given the cost burden and the risk level going forward”.
The company negotiated a switch to a management and franchise agreement “in order to still achieve return on investment plus not have the risk of further losses”.
However in late February the necessary investment fell through.
The directors said: “The reasons given were mostly due to personal circumstances and not related to the business, however, the ongoing negative press also played a factor”.
They added: “This outcome along with continuing difficult trading periods forced the directors to take formal insolvency advice.”