‘Greedy' Thistle makes Gilmour shut restaurant

Restaurateur Christopher Gilmour is seeking a new restaurant site in Victoria, London, after closing his restaurant in the Thistle Victoria hotel because, he said, the hotel group became "too greedy" when renegotiating his contract.

Gilmour opened Christopher's Victoria, a 140-seat restaurant with a 100-capacity bar, in the hotel in September 2000. Since taking over the hotel restaurant, Gilmour said, he had boosted annual turnover for both operations from £1m to £2.5m.

He said that, over a month of discussions, the Thistle's new owner, BIL, had tried to make a disadvantageous contract even worse and had reneged on an assurance given by former chief executive Ian Burke that the restaurant would not be terminated in the foreseeable future.

Gilmour said that, as well as demanding an extra £180,000 in annual rent on top of the existing £600,000 charge, a proposed new rent and profit-sharing arrangement "would prevent any possibility of a reasonable return on investment for our shareholders. Indeed, it would preclude any operating profit at all."

Gilmour also rejected "the proposed downgrading of product and aggressive cost-cutting" as they would have damaged customer satisfaction and the reputation of his five-year-old, 160-seat Christopher's American Grill restaurant in the city's Covent Garden.

He added that the closure in Victoria would not affect his Covent Garden restaurant, nor his 40-seat restaurant-in-a-pub, the Enterprise in Chelsea, because all were separate legal entities. He had been seeking new sites in London for both brands, and will now extend the search to Victoria, where he said he had built a loyal clientele.

Michael Sloan, general manager at the Thistle Victoria, said that he could not comment on Gilmour's dealings with the hotel.

The bar reopened last Tuesday (15 July) and the restaurant on Thursday, trading under the new name of Harvard Bar and Grill. The operation will retain the US steak-house style.

Source: Caterer & Hotelkeeper magazine, 24 - 30 July 2003