A full book isn’t a profit: what Gordon Ramsay’s figures tell every chef

In Brief: Gordon Ramsay Restaurants’ UK turnover passed £100m in 2025, and its trading profit rose, yet the business still reported an operating loss of £5.8m. It isn’t a scandal, and it isn’t unusual. It’s a reminder that a busy kitchen and a good GP are where the money starts, not where it ends. Every piece of kit, every refit and every new opening has a cost that never appears in your food cost, and a chef who understands that makes better decisions.

Every chef has heard some version of this. The book’s full every night, the GP is where it should be, the pass hasn’t stopped all week, and the owner still tells you money’s tight. Most of us assume they’re crying poor. Sometimes they are. Often they aren’t, and the reason is sitting in a part of the accounts most chefs never get shown.

Gordon Ramsay’s UK restaurants have just given us a very public example.

The figures

According to the trade press, Gordon Ramsay Restaurants’ UK turnover rose 3%, from £97.8m to £100.7m. Much of that came from the group’s big new site at 22 Bishopsgate in the City of London, which opened five concepts, including Lucky Cat. Trading profit, which the accounts call EBITDA, rose 4% to £8.5m, up from £8.2m. Chief executive Andy Wenlock put that down to tight cost control and new revenue streams.

So far, so good. Then comes the line that matters. The UK business made an operating loss of £5.8m.

More people through the door, more money from trading, and still a loss. How does that happen?

What does that trading figure actually mean?

EBITDA is an ugly word, and I’ll use it as little as I can. In kitchen terms, it’s what the place makes from doing the job: sales, less food, drink, wages and the running costs of the day. It tells you whether the operation earns its keep from one service to the next.

What it leaves out is the cost of the place itself. The building work, the kitchen, the kit, the fit-out. All of it gets paid for, but not in the trading figure.

Where the rest went

Take a combi oven. Say it costs £30,000 and you expect it to last ten years. The accountant doesn’t count the whole £30,000 in the month you buy it. They spread it over its working life, roughly £3,000 a year, or £250 a month, every month, whether you cooked in it or not. That’s depreciation. (Those are round numbers to show the idea, not anybody’s real figures.)

Now multiply that across a whole kitchen, a whole dining room and a whole building fitted out to the standard a flagship site in the City demands. That’s a great deal of money being written off every year, and none of it shows up in the trading figure.

Between £8.5m of trading profit and a £5.8m operating loss, there’s a gap of about £14.3m. The published figures I’ve seen don’t break that down, so I won’t pretend to know exactly what’s in it. But costs like depreciation and any one-off write-downs or opening costs are what normally sit there. A group that has just built something as big as Bishopsgate would be expected to carry a lot of them.

And that still isn’t the bottom line. Interest on any money borrowed to pay for it all comes after the operating figure, and tax after that. The final result can be worse again.

None of this means the restaurants are badly run. A new site can trade well from day one and still take years to pay back what it cost to build. The wider international group, Gordon Ramsay Restaurants Global, reported £151.8m in revenue and £14.4m in trading profit, up 12%, in a year when it merged its UK and North American businesses in partnership with Lion Capital. That’s a business investing and reorganising, and that’s exactly when these two numbers drift furthest apart.

Why this matters at the stove

Chefs are trained to watch GP. Food cost against sales, portion control, waste, and yield. Quite right too. But GP is the first line of the story, and most of us were never taught to read on.

The kitchen makes decisions every year that land in the part of the accounts we don’t see. The new oven. The second blast chiller. The induction suite you’ve wanted for three years. The refit gets the pass exactly where you want it. Every one of them has a cost that keeps running long after the invoice has been filed, and no amount of tight portioning will show it.

I’ve signed off on kit I didn’t strictly need in my time, because it was better, or because I wanted it, or because the budget was there that year. It felt like good housekeeping. It wasn’t always. A kitchen specified for the restaurant you dream of, rather than the one you’re actually running, costs money every month for a decade.

What to do with this

You don’t need to become an accountant. You need to ask better questions.

• Ask what the gap is. If you’re a head chef in a group or a bigger independent, ask your GM or owner to talk you through the site’s figures after GP, not just GP and covers. Most will be glad you asked.
• Know what kit really costs. Before you push for new equipment, find out whether it’s being bought outright, leased or financed, and what it costs each month for its whole life, not just on the invoice.
• Spec for the kitchen you’ve got. Buy what the menu and the covers need. Good kit is worth paying for. Kit, you’ll use it twice a week; it’s a monthly bill you’ve given yourself.
• Judge a new site over time. A busy opening doesn’t prove a site is working, and a loss in year one doesn’t prove it’s failing. Agree in advance on what success looks like and over how long.
• Read a loss properly. A loss because the business invested is a very different thing from a loss because food, wages or energy are running away. The first may be a plan. The second is a kitchen problem, and it’s yours.

GP tells you whether you’re cooking at a sensible cost. It doesn’t tell you whether the business is making money. Know the difference, and the next time someone tells you money’s tight on a full book, you’ll know what to ask instead of what to assume.

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Frequently asked questions

How can a busy, growing restaurant group make a loss?
Because the trading figure leaves out the cost of building and equipping the restaurants. Depreciation on kit, fit-outs and buildings, plus any one-off costs, can outweigh a healthy trading profit, especially just after a big new opening.

Is that normal?
For a group that’s investing heavily, yes. It doesn’t mean the restaurants trade badly. It means they haven’t yet earned back what they cost to build.

Does a good GP mean my kitchen is profitable?
No. GP shows whether food and drink costs are under control against sales. It doesn’t include wages, rent, energy, the cost of your equipment or the cost of borrowing. You can have an excellent GP and still be losing money.

What is depreciation in kitchen terms?
It’s the cost of a piece of kit or a fit-out, spread over the years you expect it to last. A £30,000 oven expected to last ten years costs the business roughly £3,000 a year, whether it’s used for every service or not.

Where does interest on loans come in?
After the operating figure. Interest isn’t part of operating profit or loss. It’s deducted afterwards, so for a business that has borrowed to open new sites, the final result can be worse than the operating figure suggests.

What should a head chef ask about?
Ask to be talked through the site’s figures after GP, and before asking for new equipment, ask what it will cost each month over its life. It shows you understand the business, not just the kitchen.