Family favourite restaurant chain to close another city centre site TODAY – weeks after shutting 18 eateries
A BELOVED family favourite restaurant chain is officially closing the doors on another branch for the final time today.
The closure comes as a shock for fans of the popular food spot despite 18 other eateries under the same chain also shutting for good recently.
Well-known Italian restaurant chain Wildwood announced it is closing down its restaurant in Chelsmford at the end of business tonight.
The restaurant originally opened up in the city back in 2010 before it was moved to The Meadows Retail park where it has stayed till today.
Wildwood Chelmsford shared the closure with a statement saying: “With a heavy heart, we must inform you that our Chelmsford branch is closing from today, Sunday March 2 2025.
“We have taken the difficult decision to permanently close our doors.”
It is still unclear what will replace the restaurant.
There are still 30 Wildwood restaurants in the UK with another six also in Essex.
These include ones in Braintree, Epping, Billericay, Hornchurch, Chelmsford, Brentwood.
The closure comes after the restaurant’s parent company, Tasty, announced last year that it would shut 20 restaurants after a difficult financial year.
In June, Tasty reported revenue of £46.9million in the year to the end of December 2023, a rise of 6.5% on the previous year.
But rising costs of food, energy and wages continued to impact it, along with with fewer people visiting due to the cost off living crisis.
It comes as another beloved Italian restaurant once described as a “diamond” by diners suddenly shut its doors after nearly 50 years of operations.
Santoro in Yarm, North Yorkshire, announced on its website that it had permanently closed its doors after a “wonderful 45 years of business.”
HOSPITALITY INDUSTRY STRUGGLING TO SURVIVE
Many Food and drink chains have been struggling in recently as the cost of living has led to fewer people spending on eating out.
Businesses had struggled to bounce back after the pandemic, only to then be hit with soaring energy bills and other pressures from inflation.
Multiple chains have been affected, resulting in big-name brands like Wetherspoons and Frankie & Benny’s closing branches.
Craig Rachel, director at financial adviser AlixPartners, explained what had pushed businesses to close sites in 2024.
He said: “Restaurants have seen the accumulation of external pressures in 2024, including rising utility costs, food prices and labour costs.
“Although some of these factors have stabilised over recent months, the overall impact is significant and will be exacerbated again in 2025 following the budget announcements, and this has all affected profitability.
“Some restaurant groups have been able to mitigate this to a certain extent through operational efficiencies and pricing, but consumer spending in the sector is under pressure meaning price measures are often unable to fully bridge the gap.”
Why are retailers closing stores?
RETAILERS have been feeling the squeeze since the pandemic, while shoppers are cutting back on spending due to the soaring cost of living crisis.
High energy costs and a move to shopping online after the pandemic are also taking a toll, and many high street shops have struggled to keep going.
However, additional costs have added further pain to an already struggling sector.
The British Retail Consortium has predicted that the Treasury’s hike to employer NICs from April will cost the retail sector £2.3billion.
At the same time, the minimum wage will rise to £12.21 an hour from April, and the minimum wage for people aged 18-20 will rise to £10 an hour, an increase of £1.40.
The Centre for Retail Research (CRR) has also warned that around 17,350 retail sites are expected to shut down this year.
It comes on the back of a tough 2024 when 13,000 shops closed their doors for good, already a 28% increase on the previous year.
Professor Joshua Bamfield, director of the CRR said: “The results for 2024 show that although the outcomes for store closures overall were not as poor as in either 2020 or 2022, they are still disconcerting, with worse set to come in 2025.”
It comes after almost 170,000 retail workers lost their jobs in 2024.
End-of-year figures compiled by the Centre for Retail Research showed the number of job losses spiked amid the collapse of major chains such as Homebase and Ted Baker.
It said its latest analysis showed that a total of 169,395 retail jobs were lost in the 2024 calendar year to date.
This was up 49,990 – an increase of 41.9% – compared with 2023.
It is the highest annual reading since more than 200,000 jobs were lost in 2020 in the aftermath of the COVID-19 pandemic, which forced retailers to shut their stores during lockdowns.
The centre said 38 major retailers went into administration in 2024, including household names such as Lloyds Pharmacy, Homebase, The Body Shop, Carpetright and Ted Baker.
Around a third of all retail job losses in 2024, 33% or 55,914 in total, resulted from administrations.
Experts have said small high street shops could face a particularly challenging 2025 because of Budget tax and wage changes.
Professor Bamfield has warned of a bleak outlook for 2025, predicting that as many as 202,000 jobs could be lost in the sector.
“By increasing both the costs of running stores and the costs on each consumer’s household it is highly likely that we will see retail job losses eclipse the height of the pandemic in 2020.”