Ed Sheeran’s upscale Notting Hill restaurant, Bertie Blossoms, grapples with mounting financial pressures amid Britain’s ongoing pub crisis, revealing net current liabilities of nearly £1.3 million as of December 2024.
Financial Struggles Post-Covid
Opened in September 2019 on Portobello Road in West London, Bertie Blossoms has yet to achieve profitability. Accounts filed for Dive Bar Portobello, the operating company, show a decline of £763,000 in net position since December 2021. Staff numbers have dwindled to five, down from six the prior year and ten in 2020.
During the Covid-19 pandemic, the venue closed temporarily in 2020. Sheeran personally covered wages for his ten employees, opting against furlough schemes. In 2021, the restaurant offered 50 percent discounts on white wine to boost takeaway orders.
Customer Feedback and Menu Offerings
Celebrity patrons reportedly include Peter Crouch and Abbey Clancy. The eatery, believed to honor Sheeran’s wife Cherry Seaborn, rotates its menu featuring steak, pasta, and desserts like chocolate and prune brownies, with plates priced around £19. Past menus listed just nine items, emphasizing freshly prepared food.
However, some diners expressed dissatisfaction on review sites. One customer stated: “What a disappointment, the food options were limited. Which wouldn’t have been a problem if the quality wasn’t so poor.” They added: “You could see through to the kitchen. Which looked more like a roadside catering van. Food tasted similar. Everything was manufactured and if it couldn’t be deep fried it was over-boiled or fried. Looked like a good clean wouldn’t hurt either. Expensive for what tasted like a second-rate microwave meal.”
Broader UK Pub Sector Challenges
Pubs across the UK face closures at a rate of two per day since the pandemic. The British Beer and Pub Association notes a drop from 69,000 pubs in 1980 to 46,350 in 2021. The Campaign for Real Ale reports around 1,000 closures in 2025, equivalent to five daily, though some find new owners.
Trade groups highlight rising costs from business rates, duties, wages, taxes, and waste regulations. UKHospitality estimates an additional £1 billion in national insurance costs last year.
Government and Party Responses
The Chancellor recently announced a £100 million relief package for 2026, including 15 percent reductions on business rates for pubs in England, frozen for two subsequent years, alongside extended opening hours.
Reform UK proposes slashing VAT to 10 percent for hospitality, scrapping employer national insurance hikes, cutting beer duty by 10 percent, and phasing out business rates for pubs. Leader Nigel Farage outlined funding via reinstating the two-child benefit cap for non-working British families, projecting £3 billion savings by 2029/30.
Reform MP Lee Anderson criticized major parties, stating: “The loss of one pub is not just the loss of livelihood for a landlord, or the loss of a local employment hub. The loss of one pub is a loss to all of us as inheritors of a tradition dating back to Roman rule. Yet the Conservatives, and now Labour, have facilitated the closure of thousands of pubs over the last decade. Any contrition they show is false. The crisis facing the Great British pub has been allowed to become acute, and our nation is poorer for it.”
