Sweet dreams of a gourmet

In our series on restaurant entrepreneurs, the man behind The Ivy tells Matthew Garrahan about his plans to open a boutique hotel.

Wearing an immaculately tailored suit and drinking a similarly immaculate cappuccino, Jeremy King could easily be one of The Wolseley's well-heeled customers.

Attracting food lovers, celebrities and London socialites in equal measure, The Wolseley was named after the car showroom that used to be at its 160 Piccadilly address, a short distance from the Ritz.

Mr King, 51, is one half of the partnership that owns and manages the restaurant, which has had food critics salivating since it opened almost two years ago. He has been a doyen of the London dining scene for more than 25 years – but, today, there are other things on his mind. Mr King wants to open a hotel.

Such a move may surprise those who have dined at The Ivy, Le Caprice or J. Sheekey, the London restaurants run with great élan by Mr King and his business partner, Chris Corbin. Unlike other celebrated restaurateurs, the two men avoid the limelight, preferring instead to be known for the quality of the food and service in their restaurants. It is a strategy that has served them well in the ultra-competitive London restaurant market.

The pair first came to attention in 1981 when they acquired Le Caprice, a haunt of royalty and film stars in the 1940s which had subsequently lost its lustre. Aided by Mr King's parents, who remortgaged their house to provide some of the finance, Mr King and Mr Corbin bought the restaurant and began to restore it to its former glory. The pair then "stalked The Ivy for six years" before buying it and reopening it in 1990. "I used to sit in The Ivy in the 1970s and dream about buying it," he says.

In the heart of London's theatre district, The Ivy quickly gained a following and, together with Le Caprice, was one of the top-rated London restaurants in Harden's annual restaurant guide for most of the decade that followed.

According to Richard Harden, co-editor of the restaurant-goer's bible, Mr King and Mr Corbin are unique among restaurateurs because they own multiple properties that have yet to lose their appeal for London's notoriously fickle diners. Other high-profile owners such as Marco Pierre White and Sir Terence Conran have been unable to sustain the long-term critical and commercial success of their restaurants, he says. "(Corbin and King) adopted a different strategy to the others. They could have charged more for the dishes in The Ivy and Le Caprice but they wanted punters to go home happy. It was a market-pleasing move."

Mr King says that owning the restaurants outright has been key to their success. "I think any restaurant that is proprietary driven has an advantage. I think that if the people are behind it are prepared to put their time, effort and love into it and also to share its problems, it will be a success."

Maintaining a restaurant's popularity, he says, is all about attention to detail. "Our approach has always been that you need to spend more time on the firs restaurant when you open your second."

Mr King and Mr Corbin invested in scooters and could be seen whizzing around central London between The Ivy and Le Caprice. "We would both visit each restaurant twice each night."

But after receiving a tasty offer for the three restaurants from Belgo, the restaurant group controlled by Luke Johnson, now chairman of Channel 4, they sold their portfolio in 1998 for £13m in a deal that also earned their staff £1m.

Mr King and Mr Corbin continued to oversee the restaurants for a further two years. Mr Johnson's Signature Holdings recently sold the properties to Richard Caring, a retail entrepreneur, for £31.5m.

Mr King does not regret the timing of his sale. The reason, he says, was to concentrate on an idea for a different London hotel.

"We had always been restaurateurs rather than restaurant owners," he says. "We wanted to become hoteliers rather than hotel owners. I hear people talking about (hotels) as if they are room factories and it breaks my heart."

Finding a property that met Mr King and Mr Corbin's stringent criteria was difficult. Another challenge was competing against larger, better-funded hotel chains. After failing to find suitable premises, they decided to re-enter the restaurant market with The Wolseley.

Designed in the style of a grand Parisian or Viennese café, the main dining area betrays its former incarnation as a bank, with some of the original features still visible. Grade II-listed, the building was designed by William Curtis Green, who was also the architect of the Dorchester Hotel on London's Park Lane, and constructed in 1921.

It was an immediate critical hit for CKL Restaurants, the company formed by Mr Corbin and Mr King. But their dream of opening a hotel in central London never died, and the pair are once again planning their next move. "About a year ago, we changed our thinking and decided that the way we could compete (with larger hotel groups) was to have our line of credit and equity in place," says Mr King. "We started to build a management team and appointed Deloitte to help us create a (business) model." The pair recently appointed ReardonSmith Architects, the only specialist hotel design practice in the UK, to help them find and design a suitable site. "As a hotel development destination, London is white hot at the moment," says Patrick Reardon, executive chairman. "I'm very confident that they will find what they are looking for."

The plan is to create a combined hotel, restaurant and club. "People want to be personally looked after," says Mr King. "Where we have an advantage is that most hotel groups are happy to break even on food and beverage. That's why a lot of the big hotel groups have brought in outside restaurateurs to run their restaurants. We like to think that we could run the whole thing."

He does not want to "create a dormitory," he says. "We are ideally looking for a property with 150-200 rooms. We haven't ruled out the possibility of a smaller operation if it afforded us the opportunity for the best food, beverage and rooms."

The only problem is finding a property that matches their ideas. "Our interest in hotels is to try and bring the dedication we have with the restaurants to a hotel, to try and create something truly individual."

He acknowledges that they face a difficult task but expresses confidence that the King-Corbin formula for restaurants can be extended. "We have always tried to create restaurants that we would like to go to, as opposed to creating concepts," he says. "When it comes to a hotel, we want to create one that we would like to stay in."

From Financial Times

Publication Date: Wednesday 20 July 2005

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