Tom Kerridge: The magic of restaurants requires ‘very hard work’

“Magical and fun and lovely” is how restaurants appear to outsiders, says the chef Tom Kerridge at his new pub in west London. “Actually, the reality is it’s very, very hard work.”

When we meet at Butcher’s Tap & Grill in Chelsea a week before the launch, glass-case chillers are hung with joints of beef and Christmas fairy lights twinkle in fake fir garlands. But it looks less magic than a massive stress headache. Builders hammer, drill and snag, fresh-faced new hires go through manoeuvres rehearsing for opening night.

The stocky 50-year-old, with his trademark shaved head, has carved a reputation with his restaurants, notably The Hand & Flowers in Marlow, Buckinghamshire, the only pub with two Michelin stars. But also through appearances on television cooking shows and recipe books, including diet ones, drawing on his substantial weight loss from 30 stone. The chef who grew up with a single mother in Gloucester council estates retains his west country burr and has a knack for making high-end dining unpretentious.

On the menu at Chelsea’s Butcher’s Tap & Grill (sister to the one in Marlow) are hot dogs, burgers and steaks. The restaurant was borne from Kerridge “fall[ing] in love with a building.” He is used to the ebb and flow of emotions. “You put this dream together — and then the reality comes.” The risks are high — last year he closed his Manchester business, which opened in 2019. The company that ran his Pub In The Park, a music and food festival, went into administration before Kerridge and other investors stepped in to keep it going for 2024. This Chelsea venture is funded through remortgaging and a bank loan. “My whole life I’ve been attracted to chaos and mayhem,” he says.

Nonetheless, this is a difficult time for the sector, with inflation, energy bills, recruitment shortages exacerbated by Brexit (he is unable to identify one “positive for the hospitality industry”) and lockdown closures. “Covid probably cost £3.5mn to £4mn. It’s going to take years to pull that back . . . but we’re still here.” In a “horrible way”, Kerridge enjoyed the pressure of the pandemic. “It was so excessively nightmarish. I liked the decision making.” He sums up the challenge: “[It’s like] we’ve got great big woods in front of us. There’s no path. So every day you’re going into battle almost to get through these woods and trees . . . Eventually we will get to the other side of the woods.”

Kerridge has attracted scorn in tabloids for his “eye-watering” prices: £37 fish and chips, served in Harrods department store, and £175 a head at his Buckinghamshire pub. Margins are tight, he says, before turning the criticism on its head, arguing consumers have become accustomed to cheap food. “We’ve got our food system into a really bad place where people constantly ask, ‘Why is that so expensive?’ What we should be asking is, ‘Why is food so cheap?’ If people knew the processes we went through to get that cheap chicken, they would be horrified. It’s not just animal welfare. [It’s everything] we mass produce.”

Kerridge insists restaurateurs have to make the case for quality. “This is actually what it costs. Be brave in your product. You’re not making money. We can get through the next couple of years and just go, [if] we broke even, it’s fine.” In terms of returns on effort, his cookbooks are the most lucrative, he says.

The chef sees no contradiction between his campaigns with footballer Marcus Rashford to end child food poverty, while charging high prices. “[In] my professional life I use the best possible produce that I can find. Those things have value; human beings cost money.”

What is the tipping point for prices at his restaurants? “We don’t know.” Bookings are strong, he says, though London corporate entertaining at Kerridge’s Bar & Grill has taken a hit. Mondays are quiet because of increased working from home — Fridays are starting to pick up, fuelled by personal spending.

Expenditure is down. “They might buy a £45 bottle of wine as opposed to an £85. But the cost of the business is still exactly the same. So the profit margin gets eroded.” There are no tales of blowouts in the run-up to Christmas.

The Hand & Flowers is in the strongest position of Kerridge’s restaurants, on the back of steady growth over 19 years, he says. The businesses are profitable “but not as strong as pre-Covid”.

When Kerridge left school, he would not have foreseen such high-end problems. “I wasn’t sure what I wanted to do. I ended up in the kitchen, washing up. [I] needed money . . . It was like, ‘Wow, this is great. I love this job. I love that sense of achievement. I’ve always wanted to do things with my hands.” He worked his way up and in 2005 opened his first restaurant, The Hand and Flowers in Marlow, by maxing out his credit cards and telling the bank he wanted a loan for a small extension to his house. 

Over his career, he has struggled with “addiction issues”, forcing him to give up alcohol 10 years ago. It was “really, really, really, really hard but not as hard as I thought it was going to be.” Though the working environment makes alcohol freely available, he believes people with a tendency to addiction are attracted to the industry, rather than the work itself being a cause of the problems. “In a world of high performance there’s always a high [that needs] an excessive form of release.”

Hospitality attracts “people that live on a slightly left field, different path. People that work at night, work at weekends, people that don’t feel they fit into an office environment . . . a standard box. It’s the most eclectic mix . . . We’re all in this hotchpotch pirate ship.”

Kerridge describes The Bear, which depicts a Chicago family restaurant as “the best, best thing on TV ever” — Rolling Stone magazine called it “the most stressful thing on TV”. Kerridge loves it for the stories of everyone from pot washer to head chef. “They got the levels of personal drive right . . . what makes them inspired.” The show made his brother appreciate his work and drive, he says.

“Management in hospitality is next level,” he says. “You have to get to know and understand different people [and what] they’re up against.” It also means finding the right job fit for skills. “You might not be good at meeting and greeting guests but you are really good at understanding wines.” It requires allowing people to make mistakes. “It’s very important to get it right but it’s not a life or death situation.” That means customers have a role to play. “We enter into an unwritten contract. Mistakes are made . . . it’s not robotic.”

As his business has expanded so his role has changed — a transition he has described as akin to a star footballer becoming a manager. “You can’t keep being that person in the kitchen. You have to grow. [Or else] you just create a ceiling . . . You’ve got to keep growing so they can grow.”

That includes lobbying for the industry. “The biggest thing that would help the hospitality sector is a reduction in VAT.” All these responsibilities sometimes make him pine for the purity of working in the kitchen. “I sometimes long for the day [when] you’re just having to worry about cooking steaks.” On Christmas Day, when all his restaurants are closed, he will be in charge of cooking barbecued turkey and beef wellington for 14.

In 2017, French chef Sébastien Bras asked the Michelin guide to remove three stars awarded to his restaurant, Le Suquet, in the south of France, citing extreme pressure. Kerridge dithers about whether to call stars stressful, before deciding “actually, stress probably is the right word. I don’t think stress [has] a negative connotation if you can control it . . . When you talk to sportspeople about butterflies in their stomach and controlling their nerves before a big game, it’s a similar sort of thing. I like pressure. I like questions being asked of yourself. Because when you achieve [your goals] that sense of achievement is just phenomenal.”

However, he concedes that his relatively relaxed approach to stress is experience. “You’ve been around it longer.”