'The Great British Baking Show' Judge Prue Leith Is Very Wealthy, but Just How Rich Is She?
May 5 2023, Published 1:27 p.m. ET
In case you didn’t know, there is good money to be made in the culinary world!
Prue Leith is a South African restaurateur, chef, and food writer who joined The Great British Bake Off (aka The Great British Baking Show) in 2017 as a judge.
Over the years, Prue has dazzled foodies with many glorious recipes and appeared on various reality TV food shows including Great British Menu and My Kitchen Rules.
Considering he extensive experience, it makes sense for Prue to bring in the coins — so, what is Prue Leith’s net worth? Here’s what we know.
Prue Leith’s net worth continues to skyrocket.
The Sun shares that Prue is believed to be working with a net worth of £85 million, which equates to around $107 million. This figure reflects Prue’s decades-long career in the culinary world.
Prue owned the Michelin-starred restaurant Leith's, as well as the party and events catering company Leith’s Good Food. She also opened a culinary school called Leith’s School of Food and Wine.
Over the years, Prue has also published various cooking-focused fiction and nonfiction books that include Bliss on Toast: 75 Simple Recipes, I’ll Try Anything Once: My Life on a Plate, The Gardener, and more.
With all that in mind, including Prue’s TV appearances, it makes sense that she has built such a hefty net worth over the years.
Prue Leith
Restaurateur, Chef, Caterer, Writer
Net worth: $107 million
Prue Leith is a South African restaurateur, chef, caterer, and writer who became a judge on The Great British Bake Off in 2017.
Birth name: Prue Leith
Birth date: Feb. 18, 1940
Birthplace: Cape Town, South Africa
Father: Sam Leith
Mother: Margaret "Peggy" Inglis
Marriages: Rayne Kruger (m. 1974–2002), John Playfair (m. 2016–present)
Children: One biological son born in 1974 and one adopted daughter born in 1975
Education: University of Cape Town
Prue opened up to the New Yorker in 2022 about her restaurant beginnings, saying she initially planned to open "a tiny dive in a cellar somewhere, with a gallery of unknown painters on the wall whose works customers could buy. Something very, very cheap, with fantastically good food."
But, as she noted, "you can’t make any money out of a really cheap restaurant unless it’s huge: you have to have a lot of bums on seats, so you need a huge amount of capital."
She said it took her until age 29 to open her own restaurant, by which time she had customers from her catering business.
She added: "I managed to persuade the bank to lend me some more money, and I’d saved a bit, and my mother coughed up about eleven thousand pounds to get my restaurant off the ground. The whole thing cost about thirty thousand pounds back then, so today it would’ve been more like three million."
As for her life in recent years — specifically the fame following GBBO — she told the mag: "It’s enough to stroke my ego and make me feel good, but not enough to be a nuisance.”
