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Staff at a Newcastle cocktail bar are today without a job after the company ran into financial trouble and suddenly closed.

Popolo has shut down after trading for more than 11 years in Pilgrim Street.

Administrators have been called in at Popolo Leisure and 21 staff at the bar have now been made redundant.

The company also runs the San Lorenzo restaurant in Gosforth and another bar in Sheffield but administrator Lee Pryor said they had been sold and the jobs saved.

He said: “It is always difficult closing down an operation and making redundancies.

“We are, however, pleased to have secured the employment of the 46 staff associated with the businesses in Gosforth and Sheffield.”

Gossip flooded the city yesterday and staff, who apparently had not been informed of the bar’s closure, turned to social networking websites to voice their anger and fear.

The Chronicle understands staff were given no notice their jobs would be lost.

A worker at the bar said they had been left in the dark and “hadn’t been told anything.”

Yesterday, before administrators made the statement, she said: “To be quite honest, it is 4.15pm now and we haven’t heard what is happening. It’s not looking good.”

The news comes after a number of bars in Newcastle have closed their doors in recent months as the economic downturn continues to bite.

Popolo opened back in 2002 and became a massive hit with party-goers because of its huge list of cocktails.

And in 2005 staff there invented the schnapps-based cocktail, called simply a Newcastle-Gateshead, which was showcased at a tourism event at the British Embassy in Paris to promote our area as a cosmopolitan and cultural tourist destination.

In 2012, 300 jobs were saved after Popolo Leisure Limited, which is based in Gosforth, bought the Popolo Newcastle, Popolo Sheffield, San Lorenzo Gosforth, San Lorenzo Cramlington and Establishment Sunderland, from the former Principle Leisure (North East) group, out of administration. Principle Leisure went into administration on April 1, 2011 after suffering cashflow difficulties because of the opening and refurbishment of several new outlets and the downturn.