New owner of Patisserie Valerie shuts 14 sites
The private equity firm that rescued cafe chain Patisserie Valerie is closing 14 sites, including one in Sutton Coldfield, with the loss of around 100 jobs expected.
Causeway Capital acquired the brand together with 96 branches from administrators at KPMG in February.
When it bought the business from the Patisserie Holdings group, KPMG had already closed 71 loss-making sites under the Patisserie Valerie and Druckers brands, with 920 redundancies.
A statement said: “Patisserie Valerie has today confirmed it has closed 14 of its smaller patisseries. The difficult decision was reached following a detailed review of the size, trading performance and location of each store over the past five months.
“The remaining 75 Patisserie Valerie locations represent the larger, best-performing patisseries.
“The company has confirmed that these difficult measures will enable it to better focus its investment programme on improving the quality of its patisseries over the coming months.”
Patisserie Valerie shocked investors last year when it revealed a £94m black hole in its accounts. Its finance director Chris Marsh was previously arrested and bailed in October.
KPMG subsequently raised £15.5m in three deals that saved more than 2,000 jobs.
Causeway Capital paid £8m to take over 96 shops, AF Blakemore & Son acquired all 21 Philpotts stores, and Baker & Spice was sold to the Department of Coffee & Social Affairs in a £2.5m deal.
