SSC Marketing Comment On Heston Blumenthal's Restaurant Paying Out A Profit For First Time

May 1, 2012 - PRLog -- His culinary pyrotechnics have boosted the bottom lines of firms ranging from Waitrose to Little Chef. But now Heston Blumenthal, who was once days from bankruptcy, is finally reaping the fruits of his own labour. SSC Marketing recently heard that, according to latest accounts he has paid himself and other family members a £750,000 dividend from his company SL6 Ltd. It is the first time that SL6 — which owns his three Michelin-starred Bray restaurant The Fat Duck, and receives the income from other ventures such as the “Delia & Heston” advertising deal with Waitrose — has been financially secure enough to make such a payment.

“We were really interested to hear about this idea when it first launched,” said our source at SSC Marketing, a London-based sales and marketing company, “It’s great to hear that it’s been a success and that some of the profits are making their way back to Heston.”

It follows the most successful year yet for the “king of molecular gastronomy,” which included the opening of his first London restaurant, Dinner, at the Mandarin Oriental hotel in Knightsbridge and his TV series Heston’s Feasts and Heston’s Mission Impossible. The accounts for SL6 show that turnover grew by 22 per cent to £10.1 million in the year to end June 2011. The company made a pre-tax profit of £768,566.

Friends of the 45-year-old chef, who opened the Fat Duck in 1995, say he has struggled to make money — unlike celebrity rivals Jamie Oliver or Gordon Ramsay. Blumenthal, who has a fondness for incorporating accessories into the cooking process such as vacuum jars and liquid nitrogen, is said to plough hundreds of thousands of pounds into his research laboratories.

“Heston seems to not be the type to keep a hold of his money,” said our source at SSC Marketing, “He tends to pour all of his profits back into his businesses, which of course can be a very viable way to work.”

He has admitted being a spender rather than a saver and once described how he flew out to Spain “at the start of the week, knowing that we did not have enough money to pay the wage on Friday”. He was only saved by the award of his third Michelin star, which boosted bookings and allowed him to stay afloat.