Great Western Coffee Shop

This morning I met a friend for breakfast. We chose the service area at A303 Southfields, nr Ilminster, Somerset.

I picked the location as I fancied the iconic Little Chef Olympic Breakfast™. It wasn't to be.

Little Chef is no more. All the location leases were purchased by a company called Euro Garages (http://uk.eurogarages.com) on 1st February 2017. Only the sites were purchased, not the Little Chef brand. Euro Garages could only use the brand under licence for 12 months. On 31st January 2018 the 'Fat Charlie' Little Chef logo disappeared from UK roadsides. Charlie was just shy of 60 years serving no nonsense food to the UK motorist.

At Southfields A303, the logo has been blanked with grey paint on the totems. Fascias have been removed or painted over. All internal branding has gone.

Most locations that were still Little Chef in January 2018 continue to trade, but all Little Chef branding and trademarks have disappeared. So, this morning, instead of an Olympic Breakfast™, I had a generic big breakfast. Identical in all but name.

Euro Garages have been converting the former Little Chefs to one, or more, of their partner brands. Franchises such as Starbucks, Greggs, Subway, Good To Go, KFC, Burger King. Some table service diners remain, unbranded or branded as EG Diner, but that is likely to only be a temporary measure while Euro Garages decide which partner brand to install.

RIP Little Chef. Born 13th October 1958. Died 31st January 2018.

Little Chefs were always a stopping off point on holiday journeys in the early 90s.  The kids (and mum and dad) always got their free lollipop. However I did notice in later years that the standards had dropped, particularly on the presentation side of things, for example, with the dropping of teapots replaced with just a teabag in your mug.  All the same it is still the sad loss of a long standing institution

Always took the children in there when on holiday 'out and about'.  Son always had the Olympian breakfast and still talks about it.
As said, standards seem to have gone down but will be missed.

Ah - memories of my youth.  

But, alas, standards had dropped and my final two memories are of a truly dated - OUTdated - offering in Cambridgeshire, and a breakfast that was far from what it should have been somewhere else (which will remain nameless).  I rarely - VERY rarely - complain in a restaurant, but I did complain at my breakfast which was shown on the menu with two halves of tomato
and lots of other goodies in significant quantity.   It arrived with one half tomato only, and acres of plate visible where the menu showed a well filled plate.   My complaint was answered by the member of staff pointing out the small print on the menu that pictures were just representative ...

Little Chef - little meals.   Leaves you hungry to buy a desert.  Or perhaps a little chef couldn't have managed a big breakfast!

Kalahari? Sahara?  :P

Hang on ...  I dropped something

Ah yes - here it is

s

Might explain the hungry rats near Didcot which caused problems the other day?

A mystery really why Kout kept ownership of the Little Chef brand. Can't see there how there can really be any value in it. Maybe they want to introduce it to Kuwait.

Surprised more of this wasn’t made in the media. Sort of a British institution. Obviously not.

Maybe because it has been in a long decline. Probably back to the day Forte was taken over by Granada.

Over the years there were a few different versions of the Little Chef logo.  Funnily enough, the last one was produced in 2011 and the chef was no longer carrying any food...

Paul

Ah, so that was the thing about Little Chefs. Table service. I wouldn't have remembered if it hadn't been mentioned. I'm sure I've been to a Little Chef once or twice but the last time would have been probably in the 1980s or early 1990s. And as I say, very rarely. Which is probably why I associate it in my mind with Burger King etc. Actually, what was the table service? Was it orders taken at your table or was it order at the counter and food brought to your table? Still some diners of the second sort around, at least.

A dark day for Forte employees. I know. I was one during the takeover. Almost overnight the business became less about hospitality and more about maximising profit, pairing staffing to the bone, and asset stripping. I totally agree with John Cleese's assessment of Granada's Gerry Robinson as an "upstart caterer".

Incidentally it was a brutal hostile takeover. Granada even took Sir Rocco Forte's name. He wasn't allowed to use the 'Forte' name for any business that could be seen as a competitor. When he did return to running hotels, he had to call them 'RF Hotels'. Only when Forte became defunct as a Granada/Compass Group brand did Sir Rocco get the trademark back.


It was full table service. Wait near entrance to be seated. Order taken at table. Bill brought to table. Then take bill to till on leaving.

So the Olympic breakfast I had last year in Ringwood on the A31(?) was my first and last Little Chef experience

I never had many visits to a Little Chef, my last being about 10 years ago I reckon and I would agree with others about the disappointing culinary experience towards the end. In fact, now that I think about it, my main experiences of Little Chef were driving past the red and white signs on my way to and from the South West as a child without stopping.  :-[

...now known as Little Chicken. Very little chicken...


Gobi so and so.


A notable fan was Sir John Major, which could explain why Little Chef failed to corner the yoof market.

Oddly, their website is still up and running. In the locations page, the majority of sites show as open in the text but closed on the included Google maps.

http://www.littlechef.co.uk

No tweets from 'Charlie' since December 2016. Website copyright dated 2015. I suspect the site will only remain live until its domain renewal date.

Sad to see Little Chef go - used to love an Olympic Breakfast, and sometimes meet colleagues to have one when out "on the road" for work.

Also, when I was learning to fly in the early '90's, I had an instructor who used to navigate by reference to Little Chef's - I kid you not (and saw quite a few from the air before I had ever visited them by road).

The domain is registered for Hybrid Dining Ltd, which is the company that used to own Wolfson Trago Ltd which is what was sold to Euro Garages. Its latest available accounts claims that the Little Chef and Happy Eater brands will be available for franchise in the UK and overseas. So watch this space I guess.