Eight Michelin stars. Twenty years in Chelsea. And still, the golden boy of haute cuisine couldn’t turn success into serious money. 

The restaurants were full, the reviews were glowing - but the profits? Barely simmering. Fine dining gave Gordon Ramsay prestige, not freedom.

Then came the TV gigs: Ramsay yelling at amateurs on Saturday night telly. Critics pretended to hate it (who were they kidding - they were watching too). Ten million people a week tuning in to see a man lose his temper in HD.

Turns out all that shouting was good for business. The angry-chef act packed out restaurants, turned Gordan Ramsay’s name into a global franchise and funded 92 casual dining spots. 

By 2019, it also unlocked a $100M raise in the U.S.

Just incredible.

So, if you’re in entertainment - or building something that depends on audience and attention - this one’s for you.

Ramsay built his empire the old-fashioned way: craft, graft… and screaming at sous chefs until the scallops were crisp enough. Three Michelin stars at Royal Hospital Road. Eight stars across his group. Two decades as the face of London fine dining.

The problem? Prestige doesn’t equal profit. High-end restaurants are brutal on the margins. Every extra garnish chips away at the balance sheet. By the late 2000s, Ramsay’s company was drowning in debt, and he ended up putting in millions of his own money for the business to survive.

That’s when he clocked the obvious: If he needs scale, he needs to simplify his business, and not just use his cooking skills, but also his entertainment skills (which he was already famous for).

Hell’s Kitchen wasn’t just a ratings hit - it became a format, a brand, a cash-printing franchise. Suddenly Ramsay wasn’t just a chef. He was intellectual property. Viewers became customers. Customers filled out the casual restaurants. And investors ate it up, because the audience was already proven before the expansion.

Even COVID didn’t kill the strategy. His business lost money (like everyone else in hospitality), but Ramsay personally guaranteed loans to keep the doors open. He knew debt didn’t have to be the enemy - it could be planned and used as a bridge back to growth. 

Fast-forward to today: Ramsay’s net worth sits in the hundreds of millions, spread across restaurants, TV formats, cookbooks, brand deals and licensing. Only 8 of his ~100 restaurants hold Michelin stars. The other 92? They fund the lot, including a £20m fine-dining project he admits would have been impossible without the TV money.

People love to sneer that Gordon Ramsay “sold out”. I think he did the smartest thing a founder can do: he sold up.

The TV shows weren’t a distraction - they were strategy. They created assets (formats, IP, audience) that investors could actually price. You can’t put a valuation on a Michelin star. You can on 10 million weekly viewers and a format franchised across continents.

And it worked. By the time Ramsay raised $100M in 2019, the proof wasn’t in the pudding, it was in the prime-time slots and packed dining rooms.

Attention had already converted into footfall. For an investor, that’s about as close to de-risked as hospitality gets.

Compare that with Jamie Oliver. He also tried to scale casual dining, but leaned far too heavily on debt without building the same media flywheel. Poor thing didn’t realise outrage is monetisable, and by 2019, his restaurant group had collapsed into administration. Different strategy, different outcome.

And I’m not the only one backing Ramsay here. Someone also commented on my LinkedIn post, pointing out that his genius move was “putting ego firmly in the drawer”.

He built a business on cashflow, not clout - and turned his short fuse into a long-term asset.

So yes, I’ll happily defend Ramsay’s so-called ‘sell-out’ strategy. It was a founder reading the numbers, spotting the leverage and making the brave call to swap applause for actual returns.

As for Jamie Oliver… I still haven’t forgiven him over the Turkey Twizzler debacle. 

Who knew swearing could be a scalable asset? Now, I'm not saying a few F-bombs will fix your cashflow, but here's what you can do:

In hospitality, investors care about sites, stock and leases. In media, they care about eyeballs. Ramsay figured this out before most founders: you can’t scale a single kitchen, but you can scale a TV format. Ten million viewers every Saturday was worth more than any Michelin star, because it proved demand at scale. 

If you don’t have warehouses or machinery to show off, don’t panic - show investors how you’ll monetise the audience you do have, whether that’s repeat footfall, subscriber renewals or a mailing list that actually buys.

Investors don’t write cheques for fuzzy mission statements. They want numbers. Ramsay’s shows became bankable because they were formats with predictable cashflow. Same with his books, brand deals and franchises. It’s simple maths: 1M followers × £1 of merch a year for five years = £5M potential sales. 

Pitching with “we’ve got engagement”? Don’t stop there. Spell out how that engagement becomes cash: upsells, subscriptions, renewals. Otherwise, you’re just waving screenshots of likes around.

Founder-led brands are brilliant… until they aren’t. If the figurehead stumbles, the whole thing wobbles. The downfall of Salt Bae proved that: he went viral sprinkling salt on TikTok, but thought flogging £1,400 gold-leaf steaks was a sustainable business model. When the novelty wore off, all that was left was a retired meme - not a bankable restauranteur - behind.

Ramsay avoided that fate by franchising formats and codifying the “angry chef” act into something that worked even if he wasn’t in the room. Customers didn’t necessarily come for him, they came for the experience, which could be replicated without him shouting over the pass. That’s the difference between personality as novelty and personality as an asset. 

So ask yourself: could this business still run if I disappeared for six months? If the answer’s no, it’s time to get the systems, guides and processes in place before you become your own bottleneck.

A cheque is the minimum entry requirement - congratulations, you’ve found someone with a bank account. The real value is what comes with it. Beyond bankrolling his venture, Ramsay’s US investors got him into the right zip codes, the kind of locations that turned Hell’s Kitchen into a chain rather than a one-off. That’s the difference between money that fills a gap and money that multiplies. 

So, when weighing up offers, don’t get swayed by the biggest wallet. Look for backers who can bring a network: customers, contracts, prime locations, distribution channels, supply chains or even credibility by association. That’s the leverage that compounds long after the money’s spent.

And if you want a quick way to see who actually stacks up, don’t forget you can compare investors side by side with FundOnion.

Ramsay’s furious outbursts weren’t dreamed up by a random TV producer. They started with a genuine kitchen explosion that just happened to land on camera. The anger was real. But once he saw the impact, he leaned into it. The temper became a persona, the persona became a franchise and investors could package and scale it worldwide. Try doing that with ‘polite, well-mannered chef number seven’.

Playing it safe doesn’t get you remembered, it gets you blended into the wallpaper. If your investors can’t explain your edge in a single sentence at a dinner party, it’s not sharp enough. Don’t file down the quirks, they might be the only reason anyone bets on you instead of Joe Bloggs.

That said, reducing staff to tears is not the sort of USP most founders should be chasing.

Hell’s Kitchen turned Ramsay into a global name. The format ran for years, packed out restaurants, and became the launchpad for a $100M raise. From there, he pushed further: Kitchen Nightmares, MasterChef, Hotel Hell, Next Level Chef. Each show pulled in new audiences and reinforced the persona - blunt, fuming but effective.

The media engine fed everything else. Bread Street Kitchen gave him casual dining scale. Burger concepts in Vegas added volume. Cookbooks, cookware lines and licensing deals filled out the brand at home. Fine dining gave him credibility; the spinoffs gave him cashflow.

The logic isn’t unique to Ramsay. Nobu built loyalty with sushi, then rolled the same brand halo into hotels. Customers already trusted them with dinner, so staying overnight didn’t feel like a leap. Investors love that kind of stretch: one audience, multiple verticals, compounding value.

The danger is stretching too far. Nobu Hotels made sense because it was created by restaurateurs, not opportunists. Trump Steaks didn’t. Launched in 2007 and sold through Sharper Image catalogues, it was pitched as “the world’s greatest steaks” at ridiculous prices. But no one believed a property mogul knew anything about sirloins, there was no supermarket distribution and no brand credibility in food. It collapsed within months.

Ramsay knew the line. He built out his portfolio without tipping into parody - something founders can learn from. If customers already trust you with X, make the case they’ll buy Y. Just make sure Y feels like a natural extension, not blatantly staged.

The overall lesson here? Sometimes the move that feels beneath you is the only one that gets you above water.

On a separate note, I thought I’d share something funny I saw on the internet the other day - Fantasy Startup Investing.

It’s exactly what it sounds like: A game called Visionrare where you “buy” NFT shares in real startups and rack up points based on their milestones - funding rounds, press mentions, headcount growth, product launches. 

Strip out the board meetings and due diligence, and what you’re left with is founder Top Trumps for finance nerds like me.

That is all.

I know this one was longer than a Ramsay rant. If you skipped straight to the recap, fair. Can’t say I haven’t done it myself.

A) Ramsay proved you can raise money off audience demand, not just physical assets.

B) His $100M raise was built on TV formats and millions of viewers, not Michelin stars.

C) Investors value intellectual property when it promises future cashflow, not when it just looks prestigious.

D) Personality-led brands can grow quickly, but only if the business works without the founder in the room.

E) The best investors bring distribution, networks and prime locations as well as the money.

If you’re deciding which direction to take for your own trajectory, remember Ramsay’s raw truths. Sometimes the unglamorous option - debt, partnerships, mass-market products - is the one that backs the dream. 

Want a second opinion on whether your side hustle could fund your main project? Hit reply - and we’ll sketch out a funding plan that gets you moving.

(No Ramsay-style roasting if your idea’s undercooked).

Till next time,

James