Gordon Ramsay’s restaurant business returns to profit: Gordon Ramsay’s restaurant business has returned to profit after a restructuring and international expansion. Gordon Ramsay Group, the holding company for his 31 restaurants, reported a profit of £739,000 in the year to last August, compared with losses of £2m and £6m in the previous two years. Sales last year rose 3.2% to £52m, helped by a 24% rise in international revenues to £3.6m. Chief executive Stuart Gillies said it had changed its business model and that restaurants abroad are run under licensing deals, rather than being directly owned and operated, as they were previously. The agreements have “really tight commercial terms” that mean Ramsay Group collects a fee for use of the name and faces no financial risks from running the restaurants. Unravelling some of the deals agreed before had incurred high legal fees that had eaten up some of the profits earned in previous years, said Gillies. Ramsay Group has also developed “high-end casual dining” restaurants in London that the company believes could be replicated across the world in partnership with local restaurant operators. Bread Street Kitchen, which opened in the City of London in 2011, now has equivalent venues in Hong Kong, Dubai and Singapore. London House, a “neighbourhood restaurant” in Battersea, south London, opened in 2014 and in Hong Kong the following year. The group is also targeting the US. At present there are four restaurants in the gambling centres of Las Vegas and Atlantic City and six more are planned, including in New Orleans and Baltimore. Gillies argued that Ramsay’s image as someone intense and hard-working endeared him to Americans. On a recent Propel/ALMR Study Tour of Las Vegas, a Caesars Palace executive reported that the Gordon Ramsay pub site was producing five times the turnover of the brand that previously occupied the site. 

Coaching Inn Group site re-opens with record £41,000 in first full week, reports 5.7% like-for-likes in first eight weeks of new financial year: The Coaching Inn Group, led by Kevin Charity, has reported record sales of £41,000 net in its first full week since re-opening following a £1m refurbishment of a site in Thirsk, Yorkshire and the introduction of its Eatery and Coffee House offer. Chief executive Kevin Charity said: “We were very confident that the Golden Fleece would perform as it is a great site in the centre of a very good market town, but the response since opening the doors has simply been excellent. Having the benefit of the mini-heatwave in the week, our investment in the outside dining area and pizza oven has really been welcomed by the local community, and the feedback overall has been phenomenal.” The hotel re-opened on Friday 19 May following a £1m refurbishment, introducing its Eatery & Coffee House concept as well as the introduction of a completely new outside dining area complete with pizza oven, serving a selection of handmade pizzas throughout the week. As part of the Coaching Inn Group’s £20m expansion programme, the Golden Fleece is the first of three major refurbishments it expects to complete before the end of July this year. The company also reported that trading elsewhere across its estate remains strong with like-for-like sales up 5.7% for the first eight weeks of its new financial year. The Coaching Inn Group operates 13 hotels in Yorkshire, Leicester, Lincolnshire, Northampton, Gloucestershire and Wales and aims to double the size its estate by 2019.