Working World

Wolfgang Puck began his culinary career at age 14 as an apprentice in a hotel kitchen in his native Austria. Since that early training in the 1960s, the now-famous chef has created an empire of food-related businesses that are valued in the hundreds of millions of dollars. These concerns encompass restaurants, catering, television cooking shows and segments, cookbooks, packaged and frozen food products and branded housewares, cookware and appliances.

Puck’s teenage apprenticeship led to jobs in prestigious three-star restaurants in Monaco and France, including Maxim’s in Paris. At age 24 he moved to Indianapolis to work as a chef at La Tour Restaurant. He told Nation’s Business he thought Indianapolis would be a bit more like Monte Carlo, since they are both auto racing towns. When La Tour’s owners opened another restaurant in Los Angeles, Puck came west and eventually wound up as chef and part-owner of a new restaurant, Ma Maison. Over the five years he was there, Ma Maison became popular with many celebrities.

Puck opened his own restaurant, Spago, in January 1982, right above the Sunset Strip. But during that era the area was pretty seedy, “hookers all over the place,” says Puck. Despite some initial challenges, he did manage to find investors, and, because his clientele followed him from Ma Maison, Spago was an instant success and made an immediate profit. (Spago moved to Beverly Hills in 2001.) The classically trained chef mixed French techniques with California and Asian elements to create a new and innovative cuisine that was a hit with his customers.

In 1979, he had met Barbara Lazaroff, a designer, and following Spago’s success, together they opened the Chinese-themed Chinois on Main in Santa Monica, then Granita in Malibu in 1991. Other fine dining restaurants have been added over the years, mostly in L.A. and Las Vegas, with other locations scattered around the country. Puck and Lazaroff were married in 1984, but divorced in 2003 when, according to the Los Angeles Business Journal, their companies’ revenues were projected to be about $300 million.

Puck’s signature pizzas, made popular at Spago, used innovative toppings such as duck sausage, barbeque chicken and caviar. He began offering some of these as frozen products through supermarkets. This business is now part of Wolfgang Puck Worldwide, Inc., which sells all types of Puck-branded foods as well as franchises of Puck’s casual bistro and express restaurants, and publishes cookbooks. Separate companies, WP Productions and WP Appliances, sell cookware, housewares and kitchen gadgets on HSM and through Sam’s Clubs.

Through his celebrity connections, Puck was a natural to become the official caterer to the Academy Awards Governor’s Ball, which he has done for several years. Wolfgang Puck Catering also feeds the hungry hordes at several other high-profile events, such as the Grammy Awards and the Victoria Secret Fashion Show, and it is the caterer onsite at many art and entertainment centers and museums nationwide.

Puck himself became a recognizable face outside his restaurants when he was a regularly featured guest on “Good Morning America” (ABC) in 1986, and he later had his own TV series on the Food Network. He is involved in charitable endeavors, primarily the Puck-Lazaroff Charitable Foundation. The foundation supports the American Wine and Food Festival every year, which raises money for Meals on Wheels, and the foundation has raised millions for this cause.

Puck is now married to Gelila Assefa. He has four sons.

Suzanne Ridgway is a freelance writer and regular columnist for Working World and Working Nurse magazines. Suzanne also writes grant proposals for nonprofit organizations.