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Event Review

What you missed... "Quality, quality, quality..." with Gordon Ramsay at the iMax theatre, Waterloo

What could Gordon Ramsay possibly have to teach business leaders from outside the restaurant industry? This was the question on everyone's lips as they filed into the iMax cinema near Waterloo Station to witness the chef's first speech to the London Business Forum.

It seemed most of the 500-strong audience were there out of curiosity. They had seen Ramsay's temper froth over during TV shows such as ITV's "Hell's Kitchen". They had winced as he hurled imprecations at a hapless worker, or grinned inwardly as he threatened to julienne a D-list celebrity. Now they were keen to discover how such an excoriating management style could produce so much success.

Inside, they found an auditorium ideally suited to their preconceptions. It was a huge cylinder, dominated by the biggest cinema screen in the UK, 26 metres wide and 20 metres high (the equivalent of five double-decker buses, stacked one on top of the other). If Ramsay's ego were as big as it seemed, he would need all this space and more. Yet when the man appeared at the lectern before the front row, his face projected across the vast wall beyond, he came across as affable, approachable and even a little self-deprecating.

In the hour that followed, he spoke wistfully about his childhood dreams of a footballing career, which were wrecked in his late teens by a torn cruciate ligament and shattered cartilage, and candidly about his brother's former addiction to heroin. He also showed genuine affection and consideration for the 850 staff in his fast-growing company.

First, though, he served a few trademark entrées. "Last week I did a speech in Vienna," he said, "and the first question afterwards was 'What's the secret of a successful meatball?' I told him I'd never made a meatball in my life and that he'd have to watch 'Ready Steady Twat' for that one." Another acerbic comment was reserved for the US version of "Hell's Kitchen", which completed its filming schedule recently: "There was an over-egged press story that I had a run-in with one of the staff," he said. "For some reason the Daily Mail reported I sprained his ankle, which really pissed me off... because I broke it."

In between anecdotes like these, Ramsay offered a surprising amount of advice that could be applied to all types of business. Perhaps the most surprising tip was to "avoid being trendy". "Go for trendy customers and you'll find they are very disloyal," he said, explaining that, in his industry, "when the next big restaurant opens up they'll move, and you'll find yourself two years down the line with 50% of the turnover you once had." Change should be driven by innovation, he argued, and that in turn should be driven by benchmarking, preferably on a global scale.

The Gordon Ramsay Group now consists of seven restaurants in the UK, with four poised to launch overseas (in the US, Japan and Spain). "Any time a good new restaurant opens up, anywhere in the world, we check it out," he said. "Five years ago, we could afford to do this just in Britain. But now, to stay in front, we have to respond to the amazing changes happening in, say, Asia and Australia. I send teams of 4-6 people to these places - not just chefs but waiters too - and they check out everything: even delicatessens and cooking stores. Then, as soon as they're back, we start incorporating the best ideas they've picked up into what we do."

Talent is by far the most important ingredient of Ramsay's business, and he described at length his approach to recruitment, retention and training. "Everyone thinks I struggle for chefs because I'm an arsehole to work for," he said. "But I guarantee them complete honesty, and that's important when you spend 14-15 hours in a kitchen with them every day. You can't afford to harbour inconsistency, because when someone throws a spanner in the works, things break down rapidly. Last week at a Tokyo press conference I got asked, 'If you're such a hands-on chef then who does the cooking when you're not there? The answer is: the same people who do the cooking when I am there. There's no difference.'"

New recruits can expect better treatment than they might expect from Ramsay's TV appearances. His chefs only work four days per week, for example - those days typically involve 15-hour shifts, of course, but they then get "a day to sleep and two days for a proper break". Also, he insists on people airing grievances before they can fester - at a recent management meeting he gave everyone two minutes to answer the question: "What pisses you off every day?" This ironed out so many problems that he repeated the process with his waiters and sommeliers: "They'd never been asked that before, and it acted like group therapy," he said, adding that he should know because he attended his brother's groups, and as a result decided he was "addicted to perfection".

Continuous development is another high priority: Ramsay operates a skills centre with fully equipped kitchens at his group HQ in London. "It runs induction courses two days a week, and is otherwise outsourced to other companies," he says, "so it's now self-funding." He also uses his restaurants as training environments, most notably via the "Chef's Table", a seating arrangement that allows diners to see inside the kitchen as their food is being prepared.

"Again, this removes the intimidation for the customer," he said. "It's a theatre... and we use it as a bit of masterclass, offering 10-12 courses." The chief aim of the table is to improve the social skills of the chefs, who must each present a course of their own design in under one minute. "It turns them into dynamic young leaders," he says. "The effect on confidence levels is staggering, and it's vital when you consider each of our tables turns over between £900k and £1.2m per year."

In case his chefs were in any doubt about the importance of the bottom-line, Ramsay recently forced them to use a proportion of their salaries to buy ingredients, on the understanding it would be reimbursed a month later. "All of a sudden there was no waste and they started to become more creative," he said. Other initiatives ensure all members of staff have an holistic view of the business - for example, he recently forced the chefs to swap jobs with waiters of equivalent ranks for an entire week, to demonstrate that life was equally tough on both sides of the hotplate. "It did go pear-shaped," he admitted. "On first day, half the staff got sent home." However, it also engendered mutual respect and improved team morale.

Perhaps the most transferable advice of the evening was Ramsay's ultimate guiding principle: "Never take customers for granted." "It's an easy thing to do in a kitchen, when you are under immense pressure," he said. "It's easy just to send a main course and not question the integrity of the customer. To say: 'They won't notice the difference.' But my view is: if it's not perfect, don't send it. Everyone has their bad nights, but keeping the mistakes in the kitchen is absolutely paramount."