Charles Forte, who died yesterday at 98, was Britain’s best-known hotelier and caterer of the postwar era and the founder of a vastly successful corporate empire.

Forte once claimed to have “transformed the hotel and catering industry of this country,” and there was truth in this claim. From his earliest beginnings in a central London soda shop, the Meadow Milk Bar, Forte was associated with virtually every milestone in the development of popular British catering, whether it was the concessions at the new Heathrow Airport, the first service station on the M1 motorway, or the later fast-food chains Happy Eaters and Little Chefs.

But he was also a restaurateur in grander style at the Cafe Royal and Quaglino’s, and he will be remembered especially as the owner of an international portfolio of hotels that included the George V in Paris and the Grosvenor House in London, a field in which his achievement invites comparison with Conrad Hilton or Cesar Ritz.

With a lifelong team of trusted colleagues, Forte built his success through fastidious attention to the minutiae of catering and cleaning, coupled with a bold, sometimes ruthless nose for a deal.

Although capable of self-deprecation — he described himself at 5-foot-4 as “the shortest knight of the year” on receiving his knighthood in 1970 — and ready to admit mistakes, Forte was proud of his origins, his family, and his company.

The eldest of four children, Charles Forte was born November 26 1908, in the remote mountain village of Monforte in the Abruzzi region of Italy. The living was poor, and in 1911 his father moved to Scotland and opened a café. Charles Forte was to describe himself as Scottish-Italian, and retained throughout his life a slight Scottish accent.

In 1934, Forte opened his first milk bar, and his carefully crafted business formula took off. After Italy joined World War II, Forte was interned on the Isle of Man as a foreign national, but his cafes stayed open throughout the Blitz, providing cheerful sustenance to long-suffering Londoners.

The immediate postwar years saw bold expansion, including an iconic outlet at Piccadilly Circus. This phase of Forte’s career was capped by the purchase in 1954 of the Cafe Royal in Regent Street, London. From there he moved into hotels, beginning in 1958 with the Waldorf in London’s Aldwych, the first of more than 800 hotels to come into the group in the next 30 years.

The purchase in 1970 of three Parisian hotels — the George V, the Plaza Athenee, and the Tremoille — took Forte into the highest international league of hoteliers. His company employed 16,000 people and was worth more than $137 million.

In 1970, the same year he was knighted, Forte merged his firm with Trust Houses, which managed luxury hotels. Forte and the Trust Houses chief, Lord Crowther, a former editor of the Economist, repeatedly clashed in terms that left little doubt that Crowther disdained Forte. Forte had the last laugh after Crowther initiated a failed takeover and was subsequently ousted.

Having regained full control of his company’s destiny, Forte continued to build up the business at home and abroad. Of his few missed opportunities, he most regretted not purchasing New York’s Plaza Hotel.

He lost his last corporate battle, for control of the Savoy hotel group. The board, composed of a minority of shareholders, snubbed Forte, who ended up with a majority of shares but no power.

Forte’s good reputation in public life brought him the distinction of being offered a peerage by leaders of both major political parties. He refused the first, in 1959, but accepted when Prime Minister Thatcher offered one in 1982. He was styled Lord Forte, Baron of Ripley.

After he retired in 1992, Forte Plc languished under the leadership of his son Rocco, and became the subject of a hostile takeover in 1995. Rocco Forte now runs his own hotel company, with luxury properties in 10 European cities, keeping the Forte name alive in the hospitality industry.