Leon to cut jobs and close fast food restaurants
Fast food chain Leon is planning to close restaurants and cut jobs, less than two months after it was bought back from Asda by its co-founder John Vincent,The chain said on Wednesday that it had appointed administrators to lead a restructuring programme, and it was considering how many of its 54 restaurants would need to shut,It did not say how many roles could be affected,Vincent, who founded Leon in 2004 with Henry Dimbleby, who later became a government food tsar, and chef Allegra McEvedy, bought the business back in October, four years after he sold it to the billionaire Issa brothers’ EG Group petrol forecourts business in a £100m deal,The chain has now hired advisers from Quantuma after applying for an administration order, and aims to put the business into administration as soon as possible, a process which will help it to manage debt payments as it attempts to secure its long-term future.
Since Vincent’s buyout, 10 outlets have already closed, including three overseas franchises, and the entrepreneur has announced plans to ditch Leon’s £25-a-month Roast Rewards scheme from January,Subscribers could claim up to five coffees a day and discounts on food,He has also signed up staff to training in wing tsun, a martial art, to improve coffee-making times “while lowering heart rates”,Asda, which the Issa brothers also invested in, bought Leon along with most of EG’s UK arm in 2023, but it has struggled under the ailing supermarket,The fast food chain’s sales fell almost 4% to £62.
5m in 2024 when it made a pre-tax loss of £8,38m, according to the latest accounts filed at Companies House,Vincent said that, after a review, he had concluded that the company needed to downsize as the shift to working from home had reduced demand for takeaways,He said: “If you look at the performance of Leon’s peers, you will see that everyone is facing challenges – companies are reporting significant losses due to working patterns and increasingly unsustainable taxes,“Today for every pound we receive from the customer, around 36p goes to the government in tax, and about 2p ends up in the hands of the company.
It’s why most players are reporting big losses.”Vincent added that the “immediate priority” was to close the most unprofitable restaurants.The group has either found other brands to take on leases, or will be asking landlords to release the business from its commitments.“We will rebuild Leon on its core values and I hope to be providing jobs to many more people once we have returned to profitability and can continue to grow again,” he said.According to Vincent, “Asda had bigger fish to fry” over the past two years, and “Leon was always a business they didn’t feel fitted their strategy”.
He added that the company would look to find work for affected staff in other Leon restaurants, and had established a scheme for employees to apply for jobs at Pret a Manger.Vincent bought back the chain shortly after co-founder Dimbleby told a grocery industry conference that Leon’s owners were set to “destroy the brand” by moving away from its original aim to sell “delicious food that is convenient and healthy” – and instead offering unhealthy meal deals, including high-calorie foods such as fries, chicken nuggets and cakes.The company said at the time: “We’ll keep evolving, as we always have, but our mission hasn’t changed: to make fast food good food – delicious, affordable, and better for you.”Vincent and Dimbleby, advocates of healthy eating, developed the concept of “naturally fast food” for Leon, and also created a school food plan for the government in 2013.They met at the management consultancy Bain & Company, where they bonded over a “dislike of premade sandwiches served from neon-lit chiller cabinets”, the company has said.
Trump clears way for Nvidia to sell powerful AI chips to China
Donald Trump has cleared the way for Nvidia to begin selling its powerful AI computer chips to China, marking a win for the chip maker and its CEO, Jensen Huang, who has spent months lobbying the White House to open up sales in the country.Before Monday’s announcement, the US had prohibited sales of Nvidia’s most advanced chips to China over national security concerns.Trump posted to Truth Social on Monday: “I have informed President Xi, of China, that the United States will allow NVIDIA to ship its H200 products to approved customers in China, and other Countries, under conditions that allow for continued strong National Security. President Xi responded positively!”Trump said the Department of Commerce was finalising the details and that he was planning to make the same offer to other chip companies, including Advanced Micro Devices (AMD) and Intel. Nvidia’s H200 chips are the company’s second most powerful, and far more advanced than the H20, which was originally designed as a lower-powered model for the Chinese market that would not breach restrictions, but which the US banned anyway in April
AI researchers are to blame for serving up slop | Letter
I’m not surprised to read that the field of artificial intelligence research is complaining about being overwhelmed by the very slop that it has pioneered (Artificial intelligence research has a slop problem, academics say: ‘It’s a mess’, 6 December). But this is a bit like bears getting indignant about all the shit in the woods.It serves AI researchers right for the irresponsible innovations that they’ve unleashed on the world, without ever bothering to ask the rest of us whether we wanted it.But what about the rest of us? The problem is not restricted to AI research – their slop generators have flooded other disciplines that bear no blame for this revolution. As a peer reviewer for top ethics journals, I’ve had to point out that submissions are AI-generated slop
EU opens investigation into Google’s use of online content for AI models
The EU has opened an investigation to assess whether Google is breaching European competition rules in its use of online content from publishers and YouTube creators for artificial intelligence.The European Commission said on Tuesday it would examine whether the US tech company, which runs the Gemini AI model and is owned by Alphabet, was putting rival AI owners at a “disadvantage”.The commission said: “The investigation will notably examine whether Google is distorting competition by imposing unfair terms and conditions on publishers and content creators, or by granting itself privileged access to such content, thereby placing developers of rival AI models at a disadvantage.”It said it was concerned that Google may have used content from web publishers to generate AI-powered services on its search results pages without appropriate compensation to publishers and without offering them the possibility to refuse such use of their content.The commission said it was also concerned as to whether Google had used content uploaded to YouTube to train its own generative AI models without offering creators compensation or the possibility to refuse
Australia launches a social media ban – and is AI a bubble about to pop?
Hello, and welcome to TechScape. I’m your host, Blake Montgomery, writing to you from a New York City that feels much colder than last December. 🥶In a world first, Australia implemented a ban on social media use for people under 16. It’s the first country to take such a far-reaching measure. Starting on 10 December, children and teens under 16 will not be allowed to use social media in Australia
‘I feel it’s a friend’: quarter of teenagers turn to AI chatbots for mental health support
It was after one friend was shot and another stabbed, both fatally, that Shan asked ChatGPT for help. She had tried conventional mental health services but “chat”, as she came to know her AI “friend”, felt safer, less intimidating and, crucially, more available when it came to handling the trauma from the deaths of her young friends.As she started consulting the AI model, the Tottenham teenager joined about 40% of 13- to 17-year-olds in England and Wales affected by youth violence who are turning to AI chatbots for mental health support, according to research among more than 11,000 young people.It found that both victims and perpetrators of violence were markedly more likely to be using AI for such support than other teenagers. The findings, from the Youth Endowment Fund, have sparked warnings from youth leaders that children at risk “need a human not a bot”
Social media use damages children’s ability to focus, say researchers
Increased use of social media by children damages their concentration levels and may be contributing to an increase in cases of attention deficit hyperactivity disorder, according to a study.The peer-reviewed report monitored the development of more than 8,300 US-based children from the age of 10 to 14 and linked social media use to “increased inattention symptoms”.Reseachers at the Karolinska Institute in Sweden and the Oregon Health & Science University in the US found that children spent an average of 2.3 hours a day watching television or online videos, 1.4 hours on social media and 1
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