Scooter, the prep cook from Hotel Hell’s Cambridge Hotel, received financial aid from Ramsay and has now settled down with his family.
Gordon Ramsay’s show, Hotel Hell, challenges the celebrity chef to venture outside of the restaurant industry to try and rescue failing lodging businesses.
Scooter, which fans may know as the young prep cook from the show’s “Cambridge Hotel” episode, did get financial aid from Ramsay for two years of culinary school and he now works in the HVAC industry.
The Hotel Hell premise
Gordon Ramsay has had significant success in the world of reality television.
And after his first few restaurant-rescue type shows, Ramsay’s Kitchen Nightmares (which aired in the United Kingdom) and its spin-off, Kitchen Nightmares (which aired in the United States) were a hit with audiences all around the globe, Fox did not hesitate to green light, yet another business-rescue show from the chef, called Hotel Hell in 2014.
Hotel Hell sees Ramsay move outside of the industry of restaurants to visit and dole out advice to struggling lodging establishments all over the United States, in an attempt to help the owners to get their businesses back on the right track.
Here’s what happened to Scooter from Hotel Hell
Hotel Hell aired for a total of three seasons between 2012 and 2016, but one of the show’s most talked-about episodes aired back in its first season.
The “Cambridge Hotel” episode of Hotel Hell, which first aired on August 20, 2012, features the dysfunctional Cambridge Hotel located in Cambridge, New York.
As soon as Ramsay arrived at the Cambridge Hotel, it became immediately evident that the owner, John Imhof, his micro-managing tendencies, and the restaurant’s precooked, unappealing food were the root causes of most of the business’s issues.
However, what has really helped this episode to stick in the minds of Hotel Hell fans all these years later, was the brief sub-plot involving the Cambridge Hotel restaurant’s prep cook, Scooter Telford.
This aspiring young cook made such an impression on the usually unflinching Ramsay that by the end of the episode, the celebrity chef even promised to finance the remainder of Scooter’s studies at culinary school.
But since the show ended without so much as an update about Scooter’s journey, many fans have wondered whether Ramsay ever made good on this promise.
Fortunately, through the magic of social media, Scooter’s wife, Amber Lee, has been able to provide some much-needed updates almost a decade later.
Amber Lee confirmed in a TikTok update post from March 26, 2023, that Scooter is still doing well and that Ramsay did in fact end up paying for two years of his culinary school training after the show had finished filming.
What happened to the Cambridge Hotel after the Hotel Hell episode?
Unfortunately, it seems like all of the changes and upgrades made by Ramsay and the Hotel Hell team were simply not enough to save Cambridge Hotel from its enormous debt. Hence, the hotel was ultimately forced into foreclosure in 2012.
The Glens Falls National Bank and Trust Co. bought the property at an auction for a reported sum of $299,000.
The building, which used to be the Cambridge Hotel, is now an assisted living facility and it no longer operates as a functioning hotel. Moreover, all of the staff, including Scooter, have since moved on.
Did Scooter ever open his own bakery?
Amber Lee not only confirmed that Ramsay really did help Scooter to finish culinary school, but she also provided some updates on what Scooter has been up to since the show was filmed all those years ago.
In a surprisingly ironic turn of events, Scooter now works in the HVAC business, nowhere near a kitchen of any sort.
However, both Scooter and his wife have confirmed that he has not given up his dream entirely. In fact, they are planning on eventually opening a restaurant (not a bakery) of their own in the future.
What Scooter is doing now
Although Scooter has not been able to serve Ramsay the loaf of bread from his own restaurant, as he promised the chef he would in the Hotel Hell episode, Scooter seems to have a very happy life.
Amber Lee explained in her video that Scooter had initially decided to move away from the restaurant industry in order to have more free time to spend with his family.
And, if Scooter’s Instagram page is anything to go by, this is exactly what he has done.
Scooter is also still an avid Gordon Ramsay fan all of these years later, and his entire family enjoys watching Next Level Chef, one of Ramsay’s more recent cooking competition shows, on Fox.
