The owner of York's Pierre Victoire restaurant is about to become famous on TV as the man who saved the whole chain. A BBC documentary to be screened later this month charts the success of Richard Willis and his business partner after they helped take over the French bistro franchise.

From managing a handful of staff at his outlet on Lendal, Mr Willis now looks after a £20 million business with more than 30 restaurants.

In the film, Trouble At The Top: Too Many Cooks, the producers reveal how Mr Willis helped bring the Pierre Victoire chain back from the brink after it went bust last year with debts of more than £10 million.

Mr Willis, who has moved from his Allerthorpe home near York to Pierre Victoire's new base of Edinburgh, spearheaded a consortium to save the chain last year.

He and a business partner from Cambridge joined forces with 12 other Pierre Victoire franchisees across the country to take over the best-performing restaurants from the chain's 108 outlets.

Now Mr Willis jointly owns the York, Cambridge and Stirling branches and also the name Pierre Victoire, which his new company Voila! franchises to 33 Pierre Victoires around the country.

BBC spokeswoman Julia Constable said: "Pierre Victoire was one of the success stories of the decade, but it all turned sour in July last year when the company went bust. "Trouble At The Top follows the former restaurateurs as they try to regain the sweet smell of success and rescue the chain's reputation."

The programme makers started filming when the new company was born in October last year. They concentrated mainly on the Edinburgh outlet, which Mr Willis and his colleagues transformed after taking over the group.

But staff at the York branch will be watching the programme with interest too, to see how their boss and his new partners struggled to revive the flagging chain.

Neil Skinner, general manager at the Lendal branch, said: "What he has done is good for the whole company. We're all very pleased."

Trouble At The Top: Too Many Cooks is on BBC2 on Wednesday, March 31, at 9.30pm.

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