Greg Nicholl was set to follow in his grandfather's footsteps and become a baker before his father persuaded him to train as a chef. Now with business partner Paul Cox he owns the Nicholl's brasserie and gastropub chain, and the fledgling Nicholl's Country Inn chain.
Leaving school in 1977, Nicholl began a four-year apprenticeship as a trainee chef in Braemar, near Balmoral, Scotland. "It was there I really got a passion for it and thought I could make a career from it," he says. His first job was as second chef at the Inchview hotel near Edinburgh, where he stayed for 18 months. He then spent seven years at the Swan hotel in Leighton Buzzard, Bedfordshire, where he became head chef, before leaving to become chef-manager at the nearby Hatton Court hotel.
After the hotel was sold he took a job as head chef at the Bell hotel in Woburn, Bedfordshire. While there he heard about the site that would become the first Nicholl's Brasserie. Although the 60-cover former Indian restaurant had been firebombed, Nicholl could see the potential. The brasserie opened in 1994, and two years later Cox and Nicholl opened a 300-cover Nicholl's Brasserie in Bedford, which now turns over more than £1m a year. Others followed in St Albans, Berkhamsted, and Harpenden. But with rising rents and increasing competition for high street sites, Nicholl and Cox realised they would have to look at other ways of expanding their food business.
The answer was country pubs. The first Nicholl's Country Inn opened in Soulbury, near Leighton Buzzard, in 2001, and the company doubled the turnover within two years. It's currently refitting its second property, the Russell Arms in Ellesborough, Buckinghamshire. "It's been tough and quite tiring, and there are a lot of sacrifices to be made, but it's better now and I'm almost on a nine-to-five," says Nicholl. "My advice is to stick with it and surround yourself with appropriate talent."