Ramsay’s UK sales pass £100m, but profit remains out of reach

Gordon Ramsay’s UK restaurants sold more than £100m of food and drink last year for the first time, but still lost money. The milestone underlines the challenge facing the celebrity chef’s business: turning a growing restaurant network into a profitable UK operation. According to Guardian Business (direct), UK losses narrowed to £5.8m from £9.4m a year earlier, while sales increased 3% to almost £101m.

The UK business has 34 restaurants, including the Savoy Grill, Pétrus and several Lucky Cat outlets. Its sales record followed a series of openings at London’s 22 Bishopsgate tower, where the group now offers five restaurant experiences in one location. Chief executive Andy Wenlock singled out that venue as the strongest performer, while also crediting expansion across new and existing markets and the group’s focus on its guests.

A bigger business, with different results

Across the global operation, the figures told a stronger growth story. Sales rose 7% to a record £151.8m as the group incorporated Ramsay’s US business, now jointly owned with investment group Lion Capital. The company, which operates 103 restaurants worldwide, also reported growth at established outlets that it described as resilient. Those figures cover a wider business than the loss-making UK arm.

Underlying group profit, a measure intended to show the business’s core performance, rose 12% to £14.4m. Expansion included both company-owned restaurants and licensed partnerships, through which partners operate under the group’s brands. Openings included Gordon Ramsay Steak in Vancouver, Hell’s Kitchen in Ibiza and restaurants in the Middle East and Asia. Despite that profit growth, the group paid no dividend, or distribution of earnings, to shareholders. Ramsay’s television production company is not part of these results.

Wenlock said the business had entered 2026 with momentum despite difficult economic conditions around the world. He said trading had benefited from the February release of the Netflix documentary Being Gordon Ramsay, alongside the opening of the group’s 100th restaurant: Bread Street Kitchen & Bar at Bishopsgate in the City of London. It is among the group’s venues on the tower’s upper floors.

“We remain positive about the UK market which is home for us,” Wenlock said.

Expansion meets the profitability test

That confidence comes after several years in which Ramsay’s restaurant empire has struggled to make a profit. He opened his first solo restaurant, Gordon Ramsay at Royal Hospital Road in Chelsea, in 1998. The pandemic later halted business operations and forced almost 300 job cuts amid £12m in losses. The group has since recovered ground, although the latest UK figures show that record sales have not yet brought it out of the red.

The next test is whether continued growth can improve profitability. Wenlock’s stated priorities include careful investment in company-owned restaurants and faster international expansion with experienced partners. The group has signed new US licensing deals and expects licensing, franchise and management agreements to take a larger role in its growth. Those arrangements, alongside the performance of its existing restaurants, are the next developments to watch.