Gary Usher has announced the closure of Burnt Truffle in Heswall on the Wirral, his original crowdfunded venture, just short of its tenth birthday.

Almost 900 individual donors pledged £100,000 in what Gary believes was Britain’s first non-investment restaurant fundraising campaign, enabling him to open Burnt Truffle in July 2015 as a follow-up to his Sticky Walnut in Chester. He has subsequently used crowd-funding to expand his Elite Bistros group across in the Northwest.

Announcing the closure on social media this week, Gary said: “I had a ten-year lease, and that lease has come to an end. I could have renewed that lease, but the honest truth is that I’ve never been able to make it work here. I’ve been quite vocal about how difficult the government have made it over the last few years, but ultimately, I’ve never been able to make it work here. The best business decision for us is to close, so we’re closing Burnt Truffle from today.

“We’ve paid all our bills, so the VAT is paid, all our suppliers are paid, our rent is paid, we have unfortunately had to have made people redundant with the closure of this business, and obviously they’ve been paid. Everybody has been paid.

“I have a… loan, which I took out in the pandemic, which I still must pay, and I will, through the wider business. Other than that, it feels like it’s been tied up as well as closing a restaurant can be.

“It is a sad day, it really is. When I think back to when we opened here, they had the likes of Jay Rayner and Lisa Markwell coming and we got two rosettes quite quickly too, we were the first crowdfunded restaurant in the UK with non-investment crowdfunding so that started our journey with crowdfunding.

“So, what does it mean for the business moving forward? Well, we carry on, we just keep on going, we keep trying and we keep on innovating to get through these tough times.

“Thank you to everyone that came, thank you to all the team, thank you to all the guests… we’ve loved being in Burnt Truffle, but that’s the end.“