Veeno has entered administration for a second time, and the timing exposes a wider fault line in the UK casual dining market. The wine bar chain, founded in Manchester in 2013, is now trying to stabilise a business that has already been through rescue once before. With five remaining sites still trading and another closure already confirmed this year, the move places Veeno back in the same high-stakes territory it hoped to leave behind.
Why the latest Veeno move matters now
A notice in the London Gazette confirmed that Vintage Corporation, Veeno’s operating company, appointed David Kemp and Richard Hunt of Exigen Group on 8 April to manage the administration. That detail matters because it signals not just distress, but formal intervention at the legal operating-company level. Veeno currently has sites in Bristol, Durham, Edinburgh, Leeds and Leicester, while its Chester location closed earlier this year.
The immediate issue is survival, but the broader significance lies in the chain’s repeated struggle to convert a distinctive brand into a durable balance sheet. Veeno is not a newcomer facing a single bad trading period. It first fell into administration in 2019, before nine sites were bought out in a pre-pack deal. In other words, this is a business that has already been restructured once and is now confronting a second breakdown. That history makes the current process more than a routine insolvency story; it raises questions about whether the operating model has enough resilience for the market it serves.
What lies beneath the Veeno administration
Founder Nino Caruso said the business has been hit by “well-documented market pressures, ” including rising operating costs and challenges within the property landscape. Those pressures are central to understanding the chain’s decline. Veeno grew from a concept built around Italian wines from Caruso’s family vineyard in Marsala, Sicily, alongside pizza, pasta and platters of spuntini. The brand had a clear identity, and at its peak it was operating 15 wine bars.
But scale did not bring permanence. In 2018, Veeno announced plans to open 12 new branches and appointed a property adviser to oversee expansion. Andrea Zecchino stepped down that year, and closures soon followed in Harrogate and at a Norwich franchise. The Manchester site later shut in 2022. This sequence suggests a business that expanded aggressively, then faced the kind of cost and property pressures that can expose fragility in a growth story.
For veeno, the current administration also highlights how quickly a hospitality brand can move from national expansion to consolidation. The chain’s remaining footprint is now a fraction of its former peak, and every further closure would deepen the sense that the company’s earlier rescue did not fully reset its underlying problems.
Expert perspective on a fragile recovery
Caruso’s own comments point to a defensive strategy rather than a confident relaunch. He said the process is intended to “address those factors, realign the business and ensure a more sustainable foundation for the future. ” That language is important because it frames administration as a tool for restructuring, not a guarantee of recovery.
David Kemp and Richard Hunt of Exigen Group now sit at the centre of that process as joint administrators of Vintage Corporation. Their role is to manage the business through administration, but the context leaves limited room for optimism. The chain has already been through a pre-pack rescue once, which means the market is now seeing a second test of whether the brand can be preserved without the support of a larger structural reset.
For customers, the situation is straightforward but uneasy: the business remains open at some sites for now, yet each location is exposed to uncertainty. For staff, the administration creates a period where continuity depends on decisions that may be made quickly and under pressure. For landlords and suppliers, the same announcement signals heightened risk and likely renegotiation.
Regional and wider hospitality impact
The case also speaks to a wider pattern in the hospitality sector. Veeno’s problems are tied to rising operating costs and property challenges, two pressures that have become increasingly hard to absorb for mid-sized chains with a strong but narrow identity. A concept built around imported Italian character and family-vineyard branding may attract customers, but it still has to survive the commercial realities of rent, labour and overheads.
That tension is especially clear in city-centre locations such as Edinburgh, where one venue is now among the sites at risk. The brand’s footprint across Bristol, Durham, Edinburgh, Leeds and Leicester shows that the issue is not localised to one market. Instead, the administration suggests a chain-wide struggle to make a multi-site model work under current conditions.
Veeno was founded in Manchester in 2013 by Nino Caruso and Andrea Zecchino, and its rise once reflected the appeal of a focused, experience-led dining format. Today, the sharper question is whether that model can be made stable enough to outlast another restructuring, or whether the second administration marks a deeper turning point for veeno and the sites still tied to it.
As the administrators weigh their next steps, the unresolved question is whether Veeno can emerge smaller but stronger, or whether this time the brand’s own identity has become harder to protect than to celebrate.
