The January issue of Bloomberg Markets is on newsstands this morning, and chief among the content is a big investigation on Gordon Ramsay and his well-chronicled financial woes. The article isn't online yet, but it's available in .pdf form right here (update: it's online now). Spanning Ramsay's career, from his rise to his huge television profits to his huge restaurant losses, the piece is worth a read in its entirety, but here are a few fun facts:
1) When filming television shows in LA earlier this year while his restaurants floundered, Ramsay was so stressed that he used to run at 4:30AM in Malibu wearing a black vest loaded with 20 kilograms of weights.
2) Ramsay on chefs doing television: "You tell me a chef anywhere in the world that’s prepared to turn down quarter of a million dollars for an hour’s work on TV, and they’re the biggest lying bastard that ever put on a chef’s jacket."
3) Eater NY broke the story about Gordo bowing out of his New York restaurant, but how bad were things? Losses reached $4 million a year, with a unionized staff costing 80 percent of revenues. Another problem with the business plan: "they neglected to take into account how little alcohol New Yorkers would order at lunch."
4) Even if it made sense, bankruptcy was never an option with his fame: "It’s not great if you’re making a show called Kitchen Nightmares and advising people on how to fix their businesses for you to go bankrupt."
To avert bankruptcy, Ramsay and his father-in-law spent £9 million of their personal savings.
5) In the future, expect to see Ramsay focus even more on television and not the kitchen.
· Bloomberg: Gordon Ramsay’s Recipe for Redemption [.pdf]
All Gordon Ramsay Coverage [~EN~]