Where are the Little Chefs going?

[SteveA30]

I was at Morcott LC A47 in the last week it was open. It closed half an hour early so I couldn't get in. As I was staying in the adjacent Travelodge, I tried again in the morning. The grill wasn't working so it was just burnt toast and coffee. A knife soon scraped off the burn but, a mild comment about the previous night was met with indifference, he was about to lose his job and didn't care. Can't blame him really. There was a lot of apathy towards the end.

Lovely view from there though, right across to the Harringworth Viaduct in the distance.

[fras]

I am quite surprised that anybody on this forum actually used them in their dying days ! Of course this begs the question as to why almost all eating places on motorways and major trunk roads are so awful. It must be a British thing !!

PS: I must confess we went into one whilst returning from Germany one day. Main reason was loos, (need to use). It was actually the west-bound LC on the A14 near Kettering. I have to say it was pretty dire !!!

[RJDG14]

I am quite surprised that anybody on this forum actually used them in their dying days ! Of course this begs the question as to why almost all eating places on motorways and major trunk roads are so awful. It must be a British thing !!

PS: I must confess we went into one whilst returning from Germany one day. Main reason was loos, (need to use). It was actually the west-bound LC on the A14 near Kettering. I have to say it was pretty dire !!!

The last time I was in one would have been in about 2014/15. I had a pancake, and it was perfectly fine, although pretty generic. I actually wondered at the time if they could have potentially been prepackaged ones, though I saw a staff member using what looked more like a premade mix with a setting frame in the kitchen that was visible behind the counter, so I guess that's at least a step up from a premade supermarket one.

I haven't had a hot meal in one since about 2008 or so, and I would have been a kid at the time so I don't really remember.

[Uncle Buck]

I doubt Little Chef were ever as awful as the Rod and Reel pub in Crianlarich, Scotland. The food there would be the worst I've had in my entire life. I'd very rarely give places a 1/5 review score as I usually prefer to give a 2 when I dislike a place, but might have done for it.

Ah, but if you’d gone a few miles up the road to Tyndrum you’d have found Scotland’s finest service station, the legendary Green Welly Stop! It has the feel of a diner on Route 66, a great shop, and a nice setting to stretch your legs in!

[Big L]

Ah, but if you’d gone a few miles up the road to Tyndrum you’d have found Scotland’s finest service station, the legendary Green Welly Stop! It has the feel of a diner on Route 66, a great shop, and a nice setting to stretch your legs in!

I really must stop there one day. I've driven past it a fair few times.

[trickstat]

I went to Gateshead for an athletics event in 2012 by car and would have come home on a Saturday evening. I am fairly sure that I would have stopped at a Little Chef probably somewhere between Blyth and Grantham but I think that would have been my last time.

[RJDG14]

I doubt Little Chef were ever as awful as the Rod and Reel pub in Crianlarich, Scotland. The food there would be the worst I've had in my entire life. I'd very rarely give places a 1/5 review score as I usually prefer to give a 2 when I dislike a place, but might have done for it.

Ah, but if you’d gone a few miles up the road to Tyndrum you’d have found Scotland’s finest service station, the legendary Green Welly Stop! It has the feel of a diner on Route 66, a great shop, and a nice setting to stretch your legs in!

I think I remember the place you're talking about, and it actually looked very decent; a little like a smaller version of Applegreen's services in Ireland, but my sister, who was about 10 at the time, was extremely hungry and wanted to eat at this horrible Rod and Reel place. My parents persuaded her to eat at one of a couple of local hotels first, hoping to find somewhere else that looked better, but she refused.

[RichardA35]

The A31 ex LC at Winterborne Zelston, which was reduced to Subway only has closed along with the petrol station.

The former LC was demolished last year and the build on the redevelopment is coming along with a totally new filling station, a shop on the LC site and a drive through coffee shop at the rear of the site. Open before the jubilee holiday weekend would be my guess.

[SteveA30]

Yes, I'd noticed the new canopy going up. Hope it's a Costa behind the garage, the new one (since Dec 28) at the Holes Bay rbt is now my favourite local roadside venue. One on a major holiday route though could trump it......

[BigBazz]

Meanwhile, littlechef.co.uk is still up and running. A WHOIS lookup has the last update for the domain as 21st March this year, and an expiry date of 4th August 2023.

[lexynoise]

What happened to Little Chef and Harry Ramsden in this country is the same thing that happened to Olive Garden in the US (although the latter two are bouncing back).

Bought and sold over and over, passed from corporate owner to corporate owner and from upper management team to upper management team. At each stage, costs were cut to save money and increase profit, until quality suffered and they got a bad reputation.

Olive Garden got so bad that they stopped adding salt to the water when they boiled the pasta, to make the pots last a few years longer. Imagine being so cheap that you don’t even cook pasta - your core product - properly!

[KeithW]

Olive Garden got so bad that they stopped adding salt to the water when they boiled the pasta, to make the pots last a few years longer. Imagine being so cheap that you don’t even cook pasta - your core product - properly!

This was the result of an activist hedge fund that had acquired a significant portion of the stock and was insisting on changes complaining the company was wasting money by doing things like offering free breadsticks, having too many menu options including chicken lasagne and as you say stopped the common practice of adding salt to the water in which it cooked its pasta in order to secure longer warranties on the pots. It also cut the size of dessert portions. An object lesson in how to hack off your customers without really trying by making the product worse.

The worst move they wanted to make reached a new level of absurdity by complaining the containers for take away food were dishwasher safe when actually they were just microwaveable.

[Glenn A]

Last time I used a LC was the one on the A69 near Haltwhistle, and this must have been the nineties. Even then, when the chain was still a major force and Trip Advisor was far in the future, the tea was stewed, quite expensive and the staff rather sullen. Using it again for a toilet break in 2011, the toilets were dirty and this seemed to be a common problem with many Little Chefs, they had dirty and broken toilets, not a good sign for a restaurant.

[KeithW]

Last time I used a LC was the one on the A69 near Haltwhistle, and this must have been the nineties. Even then, when the chain was still a major force and Trip Advisor was far in the future, the tea was stewed, quite expensive and the staff rather sullen. Using it again for a toilet break in 2011, the toilets were dirty and this seemed to be a common problem with many Little Chefs, they had dirty and broken toilets, not a good sign for a restaurant.

They kept cutting staff, originally food was cooked to order but by the end so food was cooked in advance and spent all day in the hot oven. The last time I used one. near Yeovilton, the gammon steak could have been used to resole my shoe. The same staff cuts meant that at best toilets would be cleaned once a day.

[poshbakerloo]

Meanwhile, littlechef.co.uk is still up and running. A WHOIS lookup has the last update for the domain as 21st March this year, and an expiry date of 4th August 2023.

And lists closed restaurants! It's so weird, like a ghost!

[RJDG14]

Meanwhile, littlechef.co.uk is still up and running. A WHOIS lookup has the last update for the domain as 21st March this year, and an expiry date of 4th August 2023.

And lists closed restaurants! It's so weird, like a ghost!

I don't understand why it's still running. I know that there was a channel in the UK called TCC (The Children's Channel) which closed in 1998, but its site was still online completely unmodified until the mid 2000s, and can still be viewed on the Wayback Machine today as proof.

[KeithW]

I don't understand why it's still running. I know that there was a channel in the UK called TCC (The Children's Channel) which closed in 1998, but its site was still online completely unmodified until the mid 2000s, and can still be viewed on the Wayback Machine today as proof.

The intellectual property were bought by a Kuwait based company called the Kout Food Group. in 2020 they announced they wanted to relaunch the brand based on a franchise model which was put on hold due to the covid pandemic. Presumably they are paying to keep web site alive.
https://www.facebook.com/koutfood/

They already have franchises for the following
Applebee's
Burger King
Burj Al Hamam
Kabab-ji
Pizza Hut
Taco Bell

[RJDG14]

I don't understand why it's still running. I know that there was a channel in the UK called TCC (The Children's Channel) which closed in 1998, but its site was still online completely unmodified until the mid 2000s, and can still be viewed on the Wayback Machine today as proof.

The intellectual property were bought by a Kuwait based company called the Kout Food Group. in 2020 they announced they wanted to relaunch the brand based on a franchise model which was put on hold due to the covid pandemic. Presumably they are paying to keep web site alive.
https://www.facebook.com/koutfood/

They already have franchises for the following
Applebee's
Burger King
Burj Al Hamam
Kabab-ji
Pizza Hut
Taco Bell

Would these franchises probably be in the UK or other countries? In many respects the Little Chef menu and many of their restaurant interiors felt moderately out of date, as though they hadn't been refreshed much for about 30 years, which I feel was the main reason why the business struggled from the early 2000s onwards.

[KeithW]

Would these franchises probably be in the UK or other countries? In many respects the Little Chef menu and many of their restaurant interiors felt moderately out of date, as though they hadn't been refreshed much for about 30 years, which I feel was the main reason why the business struggled from the early 2000s onwards.

Almost certainly they would be in the Middle East where all their current outlets are so forget gammon steaks and the Olymic Breakfast with pork sausages , they will not be on the menu

Being serious its the name they want and a vaguely British menu. There are a lot of American and UK expats in Kuwait and it was rather prosperous but the covid pandemic hit the economy hard. As with the other emirates it was a place where people working in Iran and Saudi Arabia went to let off steam. The fact that there are 14,000 US military personnel there doesnt hurt either.

As with Saudi Arabia the sale of alcohol is banned but home brew is not unknown. Sugar and yeast still ferment whatever the law may say.

[WHBM]

The A31 ex LC at Winterborne Zelston, which was reduced to Subway only has closed along with the petrol station.

The former LC was demolished last year and the build on the redevelopment is coming along with a totally new filling station, a shop on the LC site and a drive through coffee shop at the rear of the site. Open before the jubilee holiday weekend would be my guess.

If that's the one eastbound just a couple of miles north of Bere Regis roundabout, it was one of a number all built under one contract, and same architect, for direct competitor Happy Eater (later absorbed by Little Chef) by onetime regional contractor Dunnings of Weyhill, along the A303, A31 and A35, in the early 1980s. Someone at Happy Eater got financing for the "holiday market". I wonder how many are left now.

Always seemed a bit of an outlier for a Subway, which I always think of as a city centre lunchtime sandwich shop.