Gordon Ramsay Ditches California, Moves Business HQ to Texas Over Taxes and Cost of Living
While businesses have been relocating out of California for years, recent months have seen a new surge of business owners leaving the Golden State. And now, we can add celebrity chef Gordon Ramsay’s company to that list.
According to The Dallas Morning News, Ramsay relocated his restaurant headquarters in North America from California to Texas. The new headquarters is located in the Dallas-Fort Worth area of Texas.
With the move, Gordon Ramsay North America expects to make big steps in expansion. CEO Norman Abdallah told the Morning News he expects to open 75 new restaurants over the next five years.
Abdallah gave multiple reasons for the company’s move to Texas. For one thing, he said the Dallas-Fort Worth area was a good fit for some of the company’s brands, such as Gordon Ramsay Fish and Chips.
He also said the fact that some of America’s largest restaurant chains are located in Dallas contributed to the decision.
Abdallah told the Morning News that the saying goes, “If you can make it in Dallas, you can make it anywhere.”
But perhaps the biggest reason why Gordon Ramsay North America moved its headquarters from California to Texas is hidden in the second to last paragraph of the Morning News article.
“Abdallah and Ramsay were also enticed by the tax benefits in Texas,” the outlet wrote. “Plus, ‘the cost of living adjustment [from California to Texas] is pretty substantial,’ Abdallah says.”
Way to bury the lead, Morning News.
It’s great that Dallas is a successful destination for the restaurant business, but this was only part of Ramsay’s decision. Before he could choose where to move, he had to make the decision to move out of California.
It is a decision that has become increasingly common in recent months. A once-bustling center of American innovation has seen large companies including Tesla and Hewlett Packard Enterprise leave already this year, The Center Square reported.
According to CNBC, Musk told Tesla shareholders in October that the company would continue production in its California plant. However, he said California’s leftist policies contributed to his decision to move the headquarters.
“It’s tough for people to afford houses, and people have to come in from far away,” Musk said. “There’s a limit to how big you can scale in the Bay Area.”
Musk had previously grown frustrated with California’s response to the COVID-19 pandemic. In May 2020, he said in a tweet that Tesla would file a lawsuit in response to Alameda County, California, trying to keep the company’s Fremont factory closed until June.
“Tesla is filing a lawsuit against Alameda County immediately,” he wrote. “The unelected & ignorant ‘Interim Health Officer’ of Alameda is acting contrary to the Governor, the President, our Constitutional freedoms & just plain common sense!”
Tesla is filing a lawsuit against Alameda County immediately. The unelected & ignorant “Interim Health Officer” of Alameda is acting contrary to the Governor, the President, our Constitutional freedoms & just plain common sense!
— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) May 9, 2020
All that to say, Ramsay is not the first business tycoon to move his company out of California, and he won’t be the last. Americans are increasingly realizing that leftist policies in blue states are not conducive to running a successful business.
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