What are the ingredients that turn a good restaurant into a great business? This presentation highlights some key elements that chefs are using to be successful in this industry.

1. BUSINESS THE BULLI WAY
A master chef’s recipe for business success
Often called the world’s greatest chef, Ferran Adrià, long-time owner of El
Bulli, Spain’s three-star Michelin-rated revolutionary restaurant, is embarking
on a new venture: the El Bulli Foundation, a place where chefs can create,
interact and discuss their ideas with researchers from other disciplines.
© Copyright 2012 London Business School

2. Cooking up money
Ferran Adrià is not the only chef to find that a substantial
income comes more from the ability to create a distinctive
brand than the ability to serve the finest of meals in beautifully
designed spaces that enhance the experience of dining out.
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3. Restaurant critic
Alan Richman, the restaurant critic for GQ, says in The
Huffington Post that “For most of history, nobody got
rich being a chef. Then they figured out a way to get
rich – it was TV and franchising.”
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4. Money Central
According to MSN’s Money Central: “These days, top food
personalities are charging audiences up to $250 a ticket to
watch them cook, hear them banter and, some of the time,
eat their food.... It’s easily the most lucrative part of what I
do,” says chef Anthony Bourdain, who was paid for about 25
live appearances in 2011 and plans to do 40 in 2012. He says
the majority of his income now comes from live appearances,
rather than his show on the Travel Channel, ‘No Reservations’,
or from sales of his books.
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5. News reports
US News reports: “Opening a restaurant in New York costs about
$1 million, not including salaries, which start at $250,000 for the
top 10 per cent of the Big Apple’s chefs.... High real-estate prices
and tough competition have brought in investors who are looking
to expand successful concepts beyond one restaurant.
It’s no longer about ‘how many pasta dishes do you have to sell to
make a profit’... It takes someone with business savvy who will do
what it takes to get attention.”
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6. Big-name chefs
Perhaps even more interesting is the ability of big-name chefs to
help the profitability of other businesses. For example, according
to the Guardian, “Jamie Oliver is helping Financial Times publisher
Pearson to serve up record profits following the success of [his]
30-Minute Meals – the fastest selling non-fiction book of all time.
Oliver’s book has sold 1.2 million copies since its launch in
September, 2010.”
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7. The full article appeared in Business Strategy Review,
Volume 23 Issue 1 - 2012
Visit the website www.london.edu/bsr
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