Nairn puts new Cook School on back burner

Published on Saturday 14 February 2009 12:32

NICK Nairn, the celebrity chef and restaurateur, has halted his £1.5m plans to open a second Cook School after being forced to cut jobs and slash costs.

Nairn, who is a regular on the BBC's Ready Steady Cook programme, already runs a cookery school in the Trossachs, near Stirling.

But he said a slowdown in bookings and a particularly difficult January meant that he will have to lose some of the 18 employees.

He hoped to open a second school this year in the grounds of the Inchmarlo golf course at Banchory, Aberdeenshire. The project has been put back until the economy picks up. "We have seen a drop in business and I am reluctant in the present climate to press ahead," he said.

Nairn said the Cook School's turnover had risen in the first half of last year but a tail-off toward the end of the year, and a "horrific" January when business fell 40%, will mean an overall fall in revenue of about 15% on last year's 1.2m.

He said that if he did not make savings, including cuts to marketing and capital expenditure, the business would make a loss.

He remained optimistic that business would pick up and that he could get his plans back on track. Aside from Banchory, he plans two other Cook Schools in Scotland – near Glasgow and Edinburgh – plus one in London and one other in England.

He was already seeing signs that some people who had been battening down the hatches were now looking for ways of relieving the gloom. "People are getting fed up with being depressed. They want to go out and enjoy themselves," he said.

Nairn will be speaking this week at an intellectual assets conference in Glasgow where he will tell delegates about the importance of protecting brand names. He said that one of his "clangers" was not protecting Cook School when he launched the business 10 years ago. Now there are Cook Schools all around the country and he admitted it causes some confusion among visitors to his and other schools. "It was a salutary lesson," he said.

The conference takes place at Glasgow University on Tuesday and Wednesday.