Dosh of the day

Celebrity chefs see the world as their kitchen, but in business they can get their fingers burned. By Michael Bateman

The chef of the Nineties is presented as a super-celebrity. A businessman he or she is not. So it doesn't come as a total surprise that one of their number, Antony Worrall Thompson - TV's Ready, Steady, Cook, cookery book author and founder of some mould-breaking restaurants - has tripped up.

He was the first chef to become MD of a public company, Simpson's of Cornhill, owner of many fashionable London restaurants, but now they have parted ways acrimoniously. Worrall Thompson alleges "constructive dismissal" and the company is suing him for breach of contract. It claims, among other things, that he creamed off company staff to cater for the wedding of the singer Kim Wilde last September, and for his own wedding (good heavens) to Jacinta Shiel a week later.

How does this bode for other chefs in his wake? For the businessman-chef is on the march. Lancastrian Paul Heathcote, at the age of 35, is cashing in on the skills which brought him two Michelin stars (making his one of their top 10 restaurants). "It's difficult to be both chef and businessman," he says. "It's no so long ago that the image of a chef was someone you saw at the back door, drinking a pint and smoking a cigarette. Kitchen staff aren't famous for being particularly intelligent or articulate or resourceful."

Most ambitious chefs will need to find backers, he says. That's the problem when you don't see eye to eye. So he opened his own restaurant, Heathcote's, raising pounds 35,000 by selling his house and cashing in an insurance policy. After he won his second star he got a bank loan to open his next, a dazzling modern bistro in Preston. The bank said no when he asked for a loan to open a third, in Manchester.

He went to another bank, and opened Simply Heathcote's in November to a chorus of praise. "It's a heck of a strain, being in three places at once," he admits. "You have to divide yourself into about 10 pieces. And you have to be able to delegate." He started with a staff of six; he now has 140 and has just appointed a full time finance director.

But how many chefs have this hard-headed business approach? Gary Rhodes, the spiky-haired TV chef, has just launched his own enterprise, a City restaurant called City Rhodes, with the backing of the catering giant Gardner Merchant. Rhodes made his name reworking British traditional cooking at the Castle Hotel, Taunton, then at the Greenhouse in Mayfair. Now it is his ambition, at 36, to put a Rhodes in every city. "You have McDonald's and Planet Hollywood burgers in every town. So why not eat Gary's home- made faggots?"

He makes it sound as easy as cooking bubble-and-squeak. It's not easy, says Raymond Blanc, one of the most distinguished chefs in the country. His transition from self-taught cook to self-taught businessman was a painful one. The move from a modest restaurant in a shopping parade in north Oxford to a grand country house, now Le Manoir aux Quat' Saisons, was a heavy financial burden. He used the Business Expansion Scheme dreamed up by Margaret Thatcher, a grant matching money raised by some 50 partners.

He did run into trouble, but eventually took charge, bought out the other investors, and sold 50 per cent to Virgin's Richard Branson. Is that good business? "I know Richard quite well, he's dynamic, exciting, not interfering. He's wonderful at marketing. And I am consultant to his airline and some of his hotels." A pounds 6m improvement programme is planned, so it can't be bad.

Now Raymond Blanc has the itch to build an empire. The prototype is his trendy, lower-priced restaurant Le Petit Blanc, which opened a year ago in Walton Street, Oxford. He is planning to replicate it on sites outside London, starting with Birmingham next year.

There was a time when banks viewed the restaurant business with the same suspicion as the building trade, both notorious for the rate of bankruptcies. But the French have always pointed the way; in the Seventies, prominent Michelin-starred chefs in France such as Paul Bocuse and Michel Guerard began to take charge of their own destinies and became the first patron- chefs. In the UK, Albert Roux was one of the first to follow suit, finding backers for Le Gavroche among well-to-do customers in racing circles. Aided by younger brother Michel, he built up a stable of distinguished and profitable restaurants.

Following his example, his young chefs went on to run their own outfits; Rowley Leigh at Kensington Place in London, Paul Rankin at the Roscoff in Belfast, Peter Chandler at the Paris House, Woburn. And, taking off like a rocket, Marco Pierre White is using the prestige of his three- star restaurant at the Hyde Park Hotel as a base for his burgeoning empire.

Antony Worrall Thompson certainly knows the value of publicity, and he will be back. He has, in fact, always been a step ahead. He exercised his flair for spotting a trend in the Eighties, and was one of the first to embrace nouvelle cuisine, which was then sweeping France. This was his theme when he opened Menage a Trois in Knightsbridge, which quickly became a haunt of Princess Margaret. He emphasised light food, offering only first courses and desserts. No intercourse, as he put it. By 1991 he had moved on, anticipating the next big trend. Struggling with the recession, many restaurants were going to the wall. He went ahead and opened 190 Queensgate, introducing cuisine grand'mere, a subtle way of disguising that it was cooking based on the cheapest ingredients, most famously, lentils.

He is not necessarily London's most-loved chef, an unashamed magpie forever pouncing on trendy new dishes. But the way he puts them over is original enough, as he showed with his jazzy, cheery bistro-style restaurants dell'Ugo and Zoe which he opened in Soho and Oxford Street.

As MD of Simpson's of Cornhill he managed 14 of their 21 restaurants. Wasn't that too many, wasn't he spreading himself too thin? "No, no, no," he says cheerily. "I've lost count of the number of restaurants I've opened. The more you do, the easier it is. I'm good at spotting managers and chefs, attractive girls for front of house. I love the business side, doing good deals, marketing, spotting trends."

It may be the end of this empire, but not the emperor. When he spotted the trend of cuisine grand'mere (he actually "spotted" it on a visit to Paul Bocuse's restaurant near Lyons) his friend, restaurant critic Fay Maschler wrote dryly, "He has seen the lentil". Worrall Thompson chuckles, "That's right. I have my finger on the pulse"

Thomas Sutcliffe returns next week.