London juice bar chain Crussh enters liquidation
One of London’s best-known juice bar chains has entered liquidation, Morning Wire can reveal, after the healthy drinks business faltered under squeezed consumer spending and a surge in costs and tax hikes.
Wimbledon-based Crussh, which operated stores in Kensington, Soho and the Square Mile, has this week appointed Mayfair-based business recovery firm Voscap to act as liquidators.
The company was founded in 1998 by serial entrepreneur James Learmond and quickly grew to dozens of stores across the capital, including operating supermarket counters in a partnership with Sainsbury’s.
But the firm was hammered by the Covid pandemic, which saw several store closures along with the shuttering of its headquarters in Notting Hill.
By 2023 Crussh was in danger of collapse before being rescued in a pre-pack administration deal by a consortium of investors led by Jason Collins, an entrepreneur who previously sold his printing business, Apogee, to HP for £380m.
Feeling the squeeze
Last year, Crussh began reopening stores across central London and continued to operate sites in Cornhill and Bevis Marks in the Square Mile. But barely a year later, the future of the business is now in doubt with dozens of jobs at risk.
The move makes Crussh the latest hospitality business to signal financial distress as businesses wrestle with the combined burdens of higher employer taxes, increased minimum wages and reduced business rates relief.
Businesses across Britain are being shut down at a rate not seen since the financial crash, a Morning Wire analysis found, in a major warning sign for the health of the UK economy.
Nearly 2,200 businesses have also faced winding-up petitions, a legal manoeuvre by creditors to claw back unpaid debts, an increase of more than a fifth since 2024 and the highest rate since 2012. Over one in ten of the more than 300 companies facing winding-up petitions so far in April alone were retail and hospitality businesses, the analysis found.
Chancellor Rachel Reeves’ Autumn Budget introduced a host of new cost burdens for retail and hospitality firms, which took effect at the start of the tax year earlier this month. These include a rise in the rate of employer National Insurance Contributions, a hike in the minimum wage rate from £11.44 to £12.21 per hour, and a cut in the 75% discount to business rate bills to 40%.