Payton plans his kinda chicken

BOB Payton, founder of the My Kinda Town restaurant company, is in talks with Forte about a take-over of some of its surplus high street restaurants, with a view to converting them to chicken restaurants, his lastest obsession after Chicagoan pizza and country house hotels.

Although Mr Payton operates the Criterion restaurant on Piccadilly Circus in a joint venture/management contract deal with Forte, he is not planning a similar arrangement with the chicken chain.

The chain of restaurants will be sited on London high streets in areas such as Streatham, Chiswick and Islington. It is being established privately by Mr Payton and not by My Kinda Town, because, he said, MKT favoured US-themed restaurants.

However, it was after visiting 55 chicken restaurants in the USA, that Mr Payton became convinced the concept would take off over here.

He sees his chicken restaurant competing closely with Pizza Express and Café Rouge and having approximately the same average spend. A main chicken dish would sell for around £4.50.

Mr Payton and his chef, Mark Barker, have been experimenting with various recipes and testing them on unsuspecting guests at his Leicestershire country house hotel, Stapleford Park. He plans to offer just one style of chicken (almost certainly marinated and grilled) on the menu with.

"Everybody likes chicken," he said. "The key thing about chicken is that no matter what style it's cooked in, if it's moist inside people will like it."

Meanwhile, at Stapleford Park work will begin soon on a four-bedroom cottage designed to appeal to the corporate market.

Mr Payton said Stapleford Park had already hosted many corporate meetings and its countryside setting made it an ideal location for car launches. The cottages would be aimed primarily at executive meetings.

The four bedrooms in the cottage, which backs on to the estate's renovated walled garden, will be designed by four leading brand names - Coca-Cola, IBM, MGM and Land Rover. Like several of the bedrooms in the main house, the designers will be given total freedom with their design.

The themed bedroom idea is also a clever way of helping fund the renovation work as each of the sponsors pays for the design work.