Serial phoenix company Joe Delucci’s has gone belly-up again, owing an estimated £1.1m to creditors.
Appointing liquidators in late September after it was served a winding-up order by HMRC, Joe Delucci’s Ltd is the fourth failed business of that name connected to director Richard Pierce and his partner, Alexandra Beer.
Hit by a winding-up petition from HMRC, Joe Delucci’s appointed Duncan Beat and Andrew Watling from insolvency firm Quantuma Advisory as liquidators on 25 September. It owed £468k to HMRC, its largest creditor.
The company’s failure has followed a chain of failures for the troubled ice cream wholesale brand, which also ran two gelato bars in London and Brighton.
Joe Delucci’s latest iteration followed predecessors Dolce Luche Ltd, J D Realisations 2018 Ltd, and Joe Delucci’s -18 Ice Cream Ltd into insolvency. All three businesses were called ‘Joe Delucci’s Ltd’ when trading. On entering insolvency, each of three owed creditors £1m, £3.3m and £328k respectively.
A separate holding company for Joe Delucci’s, Joe Delucci’s Holdings Ltd, went into liquidation in August 2018 owing £1.3m to creditors.
That failure came just seven months after the pre-pack sale of Joe Delucci’s then-incarnation, JD Realisations 2018 Ltd, to a purchase vehicle owned by Beer for £200k.
That vehicle would then fail just four years later in March 2022. Its assets and goodwill were in turn sold to Pierce and Beer’s new company The Remarkable Gelato Company Ltd, for £146k, and the latest Joe Delucci’s was born after a change of name that April.
It is as yet unclear whether Joe Delucci’s brand and assets have been sold to a connected party again. Its website and phone lines remain live, but The Grocer has not been able to reach the company for comment.
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