Veeno Enters Administration Again

The Italian aperitivo-style wine bar chain Veeno has entered administration for the second time, underscoring the pressure facing Britain’s wine-led hospitality sector as consumer spending remains uneven and operating costs stay high.

Veeno, which trades as Vintage Corporation Ltd, appointed administrators on April 8, according to a notice published in the London Gazette on Monday. The company built its business around casual Italian wine bars and restaurants, but several of its remaining sites now appear to have stopped trading.

The chain opened its first bar in Manchester in 2013 and quickly expanded with the help of outside funding. It raised more than £200,000 through Crowdcube in 2014 and 2015, then added a £150,000 loan from Funding Tree to support the opening of three more locations. By 2016, it had grown to include bars in Leeds, York, Liverpool and Nottingham.

At its peak, Veeno operated 12 company-owned wine bars and five franchise wine cafes in major British cities. The company had once said it aimed to reach about 80 locations across the country, but that expansion never materialized. Instead, growth was followed by closures and restructuring.

In 2018, co-founder and finance director Andrea Zecchino left the business. That same period brought the closure of an unprofitable bar in Harrogate and the Norwich franchise, which ran into problems with the franchisee. Those setbacks led to a strategic review of the estate and the first administration process.

Nine sites were later bought out of administration in a pre-pack deal led by a consortium headed by Rodrigue Trouillet, a former Walt Disney media and entertainment executive who had joined Veeno in late 2018 as commercial director and new business partner.

The chain continued to shrink after that. The York site closed in 2019, followed by Liverpool in January 2020. At the time of the latest administration, Veeno had five bars left, in Bristol, Chester, Edinburgh, Leeds and Leicester. But reports suggest those locations are no longer operating, with customers saying the Chester site has been shut since February.

The latest collapse comes at a difficult moment for wine bars and casual dining operators in Britain, where businesses have faced higher labor costs, rent pressures and weaker discretionary spending from consumers. For wine-focused chains like Veeno, which depend on on-trade sales and foot traffic, those conditions have made recovery especially hard.