What Happened to The Priory After Ramsay's Kitchen Nightmares?

The Priory was a 100-seat carvery in a historic former convent building in Haywards Heath, Sussex, owned by Scott Aitchison, a former IT consultant, when Ramsay's Kitchen Nightmares (Channel 4) aired its episode on 2007-11-27. TheTVDB's listing for the episode says the business was in desperate need of help.

The problems: According to Wikipedia's episode list, most customers paid with 50%-off vouchers for the carvery, so the restaurant lost money on almost every meal it served. The list describes the head chef, Toby, as having a weak work ethic, and says the kitchen held old food and rusting equipment and that a menu which never changed had left the staff unmotivated. General manager Matt was an experienced chef.

What the rescue changed: Ramsay replaced the rusted kitchen equipment and introduced a grill menu, per Wikipedia's episode list. He demoted Toby to sous-chef and put Matt in charge of the kitchen, which got service running more smoothly. He also arranged an advertising campaign in the town center to promote the new menu, with staff carrying out the promotion.

The relaunch and revisit: The list says that when Ramsay checked back, Matt was still running the kitchen and Toby was no longer working there. Scott was offering the new menu only on weekdays, with the carvery still in use at weekends, so the owner had not fully switched to the format Ramsay introduced.

Reality TV Revisited, a show-tracking site, reported that the Priory closed in 2008 after reverting fully to a carvery, and that the building then housed a tapas restaurant, La Capilla, which closed in 2010. SussexWorld reported on 2017-02-20 that the former Priory restaurant in Syresham Gardens had been put up for sale in 2012 and that Mid Sussex District Council's planning committee had refused a plan to replace it with 53 flats, while approving listed building consent for the convent's chapel. An estate agent's listing for apartments in the Grade II listed Priory building says it was converted to flats in 2020.