John Torode, 44, is the ebullient embodiment of just what a chef with talent, determination and the gift of the gab can accomplish. Born in Melbourne, Australia, Torode left school for catering college at 16 before coming to the UK 20 years ago to look for work.

Today, he presents the BBC’s popular Masterchef television series. His first restaurant, Smiths of Smithfield, has just celebrated its 10th birthday and still caters for 8,000 customers a week. On top of that, his cookery books have been bestsellers.

But Torode also bears witness to one of the restaurant industry’s few universal and incontrovertible maxims: that anyone’s second restaurant is always the most difficult. The problem is that the business doubles in size and the first restaurant cannot financially support an adequate management structure to run two. The second restaurant can be, and often is, a recipe for disaster.

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