Peter Morton Net Worth

What is Peter Morton's net worth?

Peter Morton is an American businessman who has a net worth of $800 million. Peter Morton earned his net worth as the co-founder of the Hard Rock Cafe. Peter's father Arnie Morton founded Morton's Steak House. Peter's son Harry Morton founded the Pink Taco chain of restaurants. For about a year, Peter held he record for the most-expensive home purchase in Los Angeles history after he spent $110 million on a Malibu beach house in April 2018. That record was subsequently broken a number of times.

Combining good music and good food, makes for great entertainment.  It also makes for very successful businesses.  While it is difficult to keep a restaurant alive, and opening a music venue can be fraught with difficulty, opening a combination of the two entities, often results in a stable business.   Restaurants and bars with live music, and concert spaces that have their own cafes and bars, have flourished for years.  One of the most successful of these combination bar/music spaces is the Hard Rock Cafe, which was launched by Isaac Tigrett and Peter Morton, in London, in 1971.  Beginning in 1982, the first Hard Rock Cafe, began expanding into a worldwide empire.  Peter Morton ran Hard Rock Cafe America, controlling all properties in the US, including locations in New York, San Francisco, Chicago, Houston, and Los Angeles, and also Australia.  He sold all of the US properties , except the most lucrative location, the Hard Rock Hotel & Casino in Las Vegas, for $140 million in 1995.  Eleven years later, he sold the Las Vegas Hard Rock for a massive $770 million.  Combining food and music, really does make for a winning combination.  It also made Peter Morton very wealthy

Early Life

Peter Morton was born in Chicago on August 7, 1947. He attended The University of Denver where he was a member of the Phi Sigma Delta fraternity. Peter learned the restaurant business from his father Arnie who was Hugh Hefner's right-hand-man in Chicago in the 1960s. Arnie's parents had a restaurant in Chicago for 23 years. While working as the Executive Vice President of Playboy Enterprises, Arnie developed the company's chain of Playboy Clubs. He then struck out on his own and founded what would become the popular Morton's Steakhouse chain which he sold for $13 million in 1987.

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Hard Rock Cafe

In 1971. Peter and Isaac Tigrett opened the very first Hard Rock Cafe near the Hyde Park Corner of London, England. After some years of success, in the early 1980s, Morton and Tigrett agreed to expand globally on separate tracks. Morton was in charge of what they called "Hard Rock America". He proceeded to open locations in San Francisco, Chicago, Houston, Las Vegas, San Diego, La Jolla, Newport Beach, California, Sydney and Melbourne, Australia, Honolulu and Maui, Hawaii.

In 1995, Peter sold most of his locations to The Rank Organization for $410 million in cash. He retained ownership of the Hard Rock Hotel & Casino in Las Vegas, Nevada but eventually sold that as well. Morton is the current owner of The Ivy and Morton's Restaurant, both of which are located in Los Angeles.

Personal Life

He is a member of the Museum of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles, and a member of the board of trustees for the Natural Resources Defense Council. He also made a generous donation to UCLA which in turn resulted in the UCLA Medical Plaza Building being renamed the Peter Morton Medical Building.

Morton married model Paulene Stone in 1978. They divorced in 1989. He was then married to Tarlton Morton from 1990 to 1997.

Real Estate

In April 2018, Peter Morton sold a beach-front home in Malibu for $110 million. At the time, it was the most expensive home sale in LA county history by square footage.