Forte Group
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| Public | |
| Industry | Hotels and Catering |
| Fate | Acquired |
| Successor | Granada |
| Founded | 1935 |
| Defunct | 2001 |
| Headquarters | London, England, UK |
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Key people
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Charles Forte, founder and Rocco Forte CEO prior to takeover by Granada |
Forte Group plc was a British hotel and restaurant company. It was listed on the and was a constituent of the FTSE 100 Index until it was acquired by Granada plc. Its head office was in the London Borough of Camden.
Charles Forte (26 November 1908 – 28 February 2007) was a British/Italian caterer and hotelier who founded the leisure and hotels conglomerate that ultimately became Forte Group. Charles Forte set up his first "milk bar" on Regent Street in London in 1935 as Strand Milk Bar Ltd when he was 26. Soon he began expanding into catering and hotel businesses. After the Second World War, his company became Forte Holdings Ltd, and bought The Café Royal in 1954. Forte was a major caterer at the Festival of Britain sites in 1951 and also operated the restaurants and bars at London Airport, later known as London Heathrow airport. Forte opened the first full motorway service station for cars at Newport Pagnell in 1960. Trust Houses Group Ltd and Forte Holdings merged in 1970 to become Trust Houses Forte or THF. The name was simplified to Trusthouse Forte in 1979.
Through mergers and expansion, the Forte Group expanded into a multibillion-pound business. It included the Little Chef and Happy Eater roadside restaurants, Crest, Forte Grand, Travelodge and Posthouse hotels, Harvester restaurants, contract catering firm Gardner Merchant, the Summerland leisure complex on the Isle of Man, the wine merchant Grierson-Blumenthal, sporting goods retailer Lillywhites (which adjoined the group's Criterion restaurant) and a majority (although non-controlling) stake in the Savoy Hotel. Happy Eater and the five Welcome Break service areas were bought from Hanson Trust on 1 August 1986. The group for a time started to resemble a conglomerate with interests spanning the Sidgwick & Jackson publishing house, the Terry's chocolate company, Puritan Maid and a stake in Thomas Cook travel agents.
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Wikipedia