Create, the award-winning 'big society' restaurant, closes down

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Create Leeds
Staff and trainees at Create Leeds last year, when it was named best ethical restaurant in the Observer Food Monthly awards. Photograph: Alex Telfer for the Observer

A restaurant hailed by David Cameron as a "proud example" of "big society" in action has been forced to close as a result of the economic squeeze.

For a few heady months, Create restaurant lived out a northern version of Jamie Oliver's social enterprise dream. It hired a star chef and offered great, reasonably priced cuisine that was fêted by critics: thinly sliced venison, partridge breast and sautéed girolles, all cooked and served up by a team partly made up of homeless trainees. The restaurant's idealistic slogan was "Where good food and people matter". The Good Food Guide praised the ethos, and comments from Downing Street were glowing. Last weekend, however, just months after it won Observer Food Monthly's ethical restaurant of the year award, the dream came to an end. Create was forced to close after facing what it called "tough commercial realities".



Pickavance, a former director of Morrisons supermarkets, said: "We set out with high ideals. We were going to do this [train disadvantaged youngsters] by making money out of the restaurant. But the maths don't work. In these tough times, selling food is not enough."

Peter Holbrook, the chief executive of Social Enterprise UK, said that Create's difficulties were shared by many smaller social businesses, especially those squeezed out of "toxic" public sector markets such as the Work Programme. He warned: "We are going to lose a lot of innovation, a lot of organisations embedded in communities that achieve outstanding results for local people."

The government has insisted that it wants to support social enterprises by opening public-sector markets. Cameron called Create "a proud example of the 'big society' I want to see across the UK", and made it the second ever winner of the No 10 "big society" award in November 2010. Pickavance said that Create had been filled with optimism after winning the award and meeting ministers. "You think, 'Wow, this has really taken off.' But it is all rhetoric and no money." Create's last set of accounts filed at Companies House show losses of nearly £1m in 2011, partly as a result of opening new branches. Create board member and the millionaire businessman Ged Syddall, who made a fortune from government apprenticeship schemes, wrote off £900,000 in loans to try to keep Create afloat.


"So in today's harsh economy we have had to look really hard at how we can continue helping the maximum number of people while dealing with some tough commercial realities."

A year ago the Observer's food critic, Jay Rayner, gave Create a glowing review, citing "one of the best-cooked hunks of skirt steak I have ever enjoyed". He concluded: "It says much for the success of this place that by the end of lunch even this cynical old dog was ready to clamber on to his hind legs and applaud."

But the first outward signs of trouble surfaced in November, when Create warned that the business was "on a knife edge" after suffering cashflow problems. It closed operations in Manchester and Sunderland, and made 16 staff redundant. Create's difficulties follow the demise of another high-profile social enterprise training restaurant, the Hoxton Apprentice, which went into administration at the end of last year.
