The owner of a chain or venues says he can't take any more after a huge blaze and break in at his businesses.

Steve Haslam is owner of both the Bread and Cheese Pub in Benfleet, and Urban Fresh Restaurant in Ramsden Heath.

On November 10 the pub suffered £180,000-worth of damage following a fire.

And on Thursday night burglars targeted the South American restaurant, stealing stock worth thousands of pounds.

Echo: The Urban Fresh break-inThe Urban Fresh break-in

Mr Haslam said: “Now staff are almost looking at me thinking they can’t take any more, with all this and the impact of Covid. We feel like we’re being punished and wonder what we’ve done to deserve this.

“Business had been great and we were all on a high."

Urban Fresh opened at the site of the White Horse pub, in Heath Road last month.

Mr Haslam added: “Our property manager arrived early on Friday, found the lock-up doors open, and thought it had been left open.

“Then he realised the damage and the high-value stock was gone from the walk-in fridges and freezers. This includes steaks and our turkeys.

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“It’s a few thousand pounds’ worth of stock that’s been taken. We are devastated, we worked so hard to get the pub and restaurant open.

“Then we had all the Covid issues, cancellations due to the new Government rules, and now some lowlife does this to us. We had people running around all Friday morning to get stock to open for lunchtime.”

While the cost of repairing the restaurant will be about £1,000, the cost of the fire will be even greater and will also mean long-term costs to the business from increased insurance premiums.

Mr Haslam who owns a number of companies which run the businesses, added: “It cost £100,000 to rebuild the storage building and we lost about £80,000 in storage items too.”