In 1935 Charles Forte opened a milk bar in Upper Regent Street, London, with £500 drawn from his savings and another £3,000 borrowed from his father and a business contact. From that modest start, he became one of the most successful entrepreneurs of the postwar era, with a business empire that ranged across hotels, restaurants, theatres, coffee shops, pubs, motorway service areas, airport and airline catering, amusement parks, piers and confectionery.

Always a bold entrepreneur, Forte moved into a completely different league in 1970, when he merged his company with Trust Houses to form Trust Houses Forte (later Trusthouse Forte). With assets in the region of £120 million, the new group was one of the largest hotel and catering businesses in the world.

After fighting off a hostile bid from Allied Breweries, Forte maintained a tight grip on the business for more than two decades. When, in 1992, he finally stood down as chairman in favour of his son, Rocco, he was 84 years of age.

Appointed life president, Forte enjoyed his honorary title for just three years. In 1996, after one of the most ferocious takeover battles of the decade, the Forte group was acquired by Granada for £3.9 billion.

The eldest of four children, Charles Forte was born in 1908 in Monforte Casalaticco, Italy. At the age of 4, he was sent to join his father, Rocco, in Scotland, where he had opened a small café in Loanhead, near Edinburgh. He attended Alloa Academy, where he became head boy, and then boarded at St Joseph’s College, Dumfries.

At 17 he joined the family business, which now comprised a chain of ice-cream parlours and cafés, both in Scotland and along the South Coast of England. He learnt the ropes in a restaurant in Weston-super-Mare. By 1929 he was manager of the Venetian Lounge in Brighton.

It was his father, he later told The Times, who shaped his business philosophy: “He had all those principles that now seem old-fashioned. Basic things that are so essential — about hygiene, about always being honest to customers and staff, about working hard and not being extravagant.”

In 1934 Forte read a newspaper article about an Australian who had opened a milk bar in Fleet Street. Intrigued, he went to London to take a look and then approached the owner, Hugh Macintosh, with a business proposal — make him a partner and he would boost the bar’s profits by adding sandwiches, ice-cream sundaes, pastries and a coffee machine. Macintosh was not prepared to depart from his original concept, however.

Undeterred, Forte scraped together enough money to open the Meadow Bar in Upper Regent Street, next to Boosey & Hawkes. By 1940 he owned eight such establishments in London as well as a central catering business to supply them, and was being described in the press as “the milk bar king”.

After Italy’s entry into war as an Axis power in June 1940, Forte, still at that time an Italian citizen, was interned on the Isle of Man. But he was released after three months, and was able to resume his business activities.

His company was to expand swiftly after 1945 as he capitalised on the opportunities presented by growing consumer spending power and the public’s desire for higher standards of food and entertainment. He acquired a string of properties in Piccadilly, including Rainbow Corner, a former Maison Lyons, which he bought with a £30,000 loan from Prudential Assurance. By leasing back part of the property to himself at a rent of £4,000 a year and letting the rest to the Canadian Government for £8,000 a year, he produced an income of £12,000 on a £30,000 investment. In 1950 he bought the site of the Criterion Theatre for £800,000. Within six years he was able to boost the Criterion’s turnover from £80,000 to £500,000.

In 1951 Forte won the contract to provide catering facilities at the Festival of Britain. He was later granted concessions at a number of airports, including Heathrow and Gatwick, and he won contracts from numerous European airlines to provide in-flight food.

Forte bought the Café Royal in 1954. Four years later he acquired his first hotel, the Waldorf, in the Aldwych. At the end of the decade, he began to accumulate service station concessions on Britain’s burgeoning motorway system.

After going public in 1962, the business would expand through the purchase of more hotels at home and abroad, and the acquisition of the chocolate manufacturer Terry’s of York, the brewer and pub owner Fullers and the Kardomah café chain.

A hands-on, details man, Forte ran his companies on simple lines from the centre, with careful financial control. His boardroom philosophy, he declared, was to “satisfy our customers, increase our profitability, rear initiative, provide excellent working conditions and act with integrity at all times”.

In 1970 the Forte group merged with Trust Houses, which controlled about 200 hotels, including such London institutions as Grosvenor House, the Hyde Park Hotel, Brown’s and the Cavendish. It also held large stakes in two Travelodge companies, giving it a strong presence in both North America and Australia.

Before to the deal was struck, it was understood between Forte and Trust Houses’ chairman, Lord Crowther, that Crowther would hold the same position at the new group, but would step down after a year in favour of Forte, who would initially serve as deputy chairman. Soon after the merger was completed, however, it became clear that Crowther did not see this understanding in that light. When challenged, he claimed that there was no enforceable contract and that he had merely expressed “an intention”.

The tension between the two sides of the business increased still further as differences of operating culture emerged. In contrast to the Forte group, which had always relied on human contacts, discussion and personal supervision, Trust Houses had been run on highly bureaucratic lines. Whereas the staff in Trust Houses’ HQ left work at 5.30pm, Forte’s central management was accustomed to working late hours.

These problems were further exacerbated when Allied Breweries launched a £128 million takeover bid for THF that split the board and caused huge animosity. Forte’s response was swift, fierce and effective. Already the owner of by far the largest single share of the equity, he borrowed £2 million to outbid Allied for shares in the market. Making adroit use of the media to promote his case, he then rallied support from friends, employees and other shareholders to secure the rejection of Allied’s offer.

Having won control of the board of THF from Crowther, Forte became chief executive, a role he occupied until 1978, when he became executive chairman. Three years later he became nonexecutive chairman, a move that prepared the way for the succession of his son Rocco (now Sir Rocco).

In 1981 Forte launched a bid for the Savoy Hotel group but this was rejected. He later tried again, and after spending £38 million, he ended up with 69 per cent of the Savoy’s equity but — owing to the group’s unusual share structure — just 42 per cent of the voting capital. In 1989 he would finally acknowledge defeat and make peace with the Savoy’s board and its chairman, Sir Hugh Wontner.

After his retirement as chairman in 1992 Forte continued to maintain a close watch on the business. Then, when Granada made its offer for the Forte group, he acted as his son’s principal adviser. This time around, however, he found himself outflanked by another masterful manipulator of the media, Gerry Robinson, the Granada chief executive, who made much of the fact that he, too, was a self-made man. During the course of a bitter war of words, the Fortes landed a few notable blows of their own, but THF failed to win the all-important support of a number of institutional investors, and was taken over by Granada, the £3.9 billion tender leaving the Forte family with about £350 million.

Forte’s autobiography, Forte, published in 1986, portrayed a proud, passionate man who was utterly devoted to his family. It contained much humour and irony, its most memorable sections undoubtedly being those that were concerned with settling (or trying to settle) old scores, most notably with Trust Houses’ Lord Crowther and the Savoy Hotel group’s Sir Hugh Wontner.

Forte was knighted in 1970. He accepted a life peerage from Margaret Thatcher’s Government in 1982, having turned down a peerage many years earlier when it had been offered on the proposal of Hugh Gaitskell of the Labour Party, then Leader of the Opposition.

Charles Forte married, in 1943, Irene Chierico. He is survived by her and by their son, Sir Rocco, and five daughters, one of whom is the interior designer and hotelier Olga Polizzi.

Lord Forte, entrepreneur, was born on November 26, 1908. He died on February 28, 2007, aged 98