Menu for success takes Carlo Di Stefano's restaurant chain into Middle East

Jan 8 2009 by Tom Fleming, Birmingham Post

Carlo Di Stefano has built one of the country’s foremost restaurant brands. Tom Fleming finds out about his plans to go global.

The recipe for restaurant success is, on paper, fairly easy.

First, take a flamboyant Italian hairdresser with a love of good food. Secondly, add generous portions of passion and zest for life (to taste, but more the better).

Thirdly, add long days and lashings of hard work and blend until a small empire rises.

Over the next 28 years, check regularly and review progress.

(You can change parts of the recipe to suit your personal tastes, but do not omit or substitute the passion and the hard work or it will mix will fail to rise.)

It worked for Carlo Di Stefano, of the prestigious San Carlo Group of Italian restaurants.

At the age of 17 he moved from Ragusa, in Sicily, to Leeds, where he worked as a hairdresser. He had just £12 in his pocket.

Now he oversees a multi-million pound restaurant empire that stretches from London to Manchester – and is about to go global.

When we meet at his buzzing Birmingham restaurant in Temple Street, he becomes almost evangelical about the restaurant trade, rapidly eulogising on what makes some work – and what makes others fail.

He uses the word “passion” a lot. He cites this quality above all others when it comes to making such a volatile industry as fine dining a success.

A typical Italian – all hand and arm gestures as he talks – Mr Di Stefano has grafted since the age of nine, when he swept floors in hairdressers and restaurants.

“If you work for wages or you are looking at the clock, it is no good,” he said, shaking his head. “You always need passion in your heart. I work because I love it. And then it doesn’t feel like work.”

The results, as far as he is concerned, speak for themselves.

He was involved with various ventures in Leeds and Manchester between 1962, when he first arrived in England, and 1979. They included hair salons, fashion stores, discos and a coffee bar. But food was always his first love and in 1980, he decided to focus on his obsession, opening his first restaurant, Coco, in Manchester, at a cost of £250,000.

Now he has four San Carlo restaurants in Birmingham, which opened in 1992, Bristol, Leicester and Manchester. Last year the chain posted revenues of £16.7 million with profits of £1.2 million.

In 2007 Mr Di Stefano bought the prestigious Signor Sassi restaurant in Knightsbridge Green, opposite Harrods in London , and has invested £1.25 million