After decades of serving up gourmet fare, Sir Terence Conran is finally preparing to take his money off the table.

The cigar-puffing entrepreneur has called in an investment bank to find a buyer for his restaurant empire.

Judging by the soaring price of London eateries, Conran, who launched furniture store Habitat in 1964, could bag £100m from a sale.

D&D London, the company that owns such restaurants as the Pont de la Tour, Blueprint Cafe and the Skylon at the Festival Hall, has appointed Goldman Sachs to sound out buyers after receiving approaches from private equity firms and wealthy individuals.

Sir Terence’s company, Conran Group, sold a 49% stake in 2006. He retains 51%. The buyers were managers Des Gunewardena, David Loewi and HBOS in a management buyout that valued the company at around £50m.

If he sells out completely this time around he would be following the lead of restaurateurs concerned that the capital’s fine dining boom is reaching a peak.

At the start of the year, Alan Yau, the Hong Kong businessman behind the Wagamama chain of Japanese restaurants, sold his Michelin starred Hakkasan and Yauatcha eateries for £31m to Tasameem, an arm of the Abu Dhabi Investment Authority.

D&D London has been prospering since Conran reduced his holding. The restaurant group served up a 40% increase in profits in its first year since being bought out of the designer’s company.

The strongest performers in the group included City venues such as Coq d’Argent and the outlets in the Royal Exchange.

The management has ambitions to turn D&D London into a £1 billion company in the next five years. It is hunting for opportunities to expand in New York, Asia and the Middle East.

Before restaurants, Conran came to prominence because of his design work. He started his own design practice in 1956 with the Summa furniture range and designing a shop for Mary Quant.

His restaurants became and remained favourite haunts for celebrities. Kate Middleton, Prince William’s girlfriend, was recently spotted at Conran’s Bluebird restaurant in Chelsea, while Edina and Patsy, the party-loving lead characters in the BBC sitcom Absolutely Fabulous, used to head out to Quaglino’s in St James’s.

Conran was recently at loggerheads with the French advertising giant Havas over the right to use his name. Havas secured the rights to use the Conran Design Group brand in 1990 during the break-up of Conran’s Storehouse group. He opposed plans to increase the scale of the business and declined the offer of a seat on the board.

Explore Food & Drink

• Gordon Ramsay

• Heston Blumenthal

• Recipes

• Wine

• Real Food

• Drinks

• Anjum Anand

• Eating Out

• Video Recipes

Times Recommends

• Britain's Top 20 seaside fish and chip shops
• Ice cream makers: the scoop of the century
• British berries make super sorbets