British chef and restauranteur Jamie Oliver took to social media this week to share that his restaurants in the United Kingdom have officially gone into administration, causing what means the loss of upwards of 1,000 jobs and all but three of his restaurants to close, PEOPLE reports.
According to U.K.'s Real Business Rescue (RBR), this means the restaurants were passed on to a licensed insolvency practitioner who is now the appointed administrator. For Jamie's restaurant groups, KPMG will act as the administrator and RBR says their "primary goal is to leverage the company's assets to repay creditors as quickly and as fully as possible without preference."
Unfortunately for the world famous chef, this heartbreaking moment happened just under a year since he put $10 million of his own money back into his restaurant group to save it just two hours before it went bankrupt.
If you thought his social media posts were sad, though, the Metro also shared Jamie's heartbreaking email to his staff, addressing the devastation and thanking them for their undying support through all the ups and downs:
Although I can’t physically be with everyone around the country today, I wanted to take a moment to thank you all for putting your hearts and souls into our restaurants...I’m so proud of all these achievements which makes it even more painful to say goodbye. We’ve had the very best and sadly also the worst of it. You guys are the best in the business and I know you will move on to great things in no time at all. I’m truly sorry and give you all my love, gratitude and most importantly wish you all the luck in the world. Today is a really sad day.
Head over to the Metro for the full email—and prepare to get really emotional.
