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| foundation = 1958
| foundation = 1958
| founder = [[Sam Alper]]
| founder = [[Sam Alper]]
| key_people = Ian Pegler, chief executive
| key_people = Tracey Mulligan, Managing Director
| location = [[Sheffield]], [[England]]
| location = [[Sheffield]], [[England]]
| homepage = [http://www.littlechef.co.uk/ Official website]
| homepage = [http://www.littlechef.co.uk/ Official website]

Revision as of 16:29, 6 August 2010

Little Chef
Company typeRoadside Restaurant Chain
GenreChain of 173 roadside restaurants
Founded1958
FounderSam Alper
HeadquartersSheffield, England
Key people
Tracey Mulligan, Managing Director
OwnerRCapital
WebsiteOfficial website

Little Chef is a chain of roadside restaurants in the United Kingdom, founded in 1958 and owned by the UK private equity group RCapital. Restaurants are typically found on A roads. Little Chef's previous owners were The People's Restaurant Group Ltd, a company belonging to British catering entrepreneurs Simon Heath and Lawrence Wosskow, which went into administration on 3 January 2007.[1] Little Chef's headquarters are in Sheffield. Many branches are located next to a Burger King or a Travelodge. Some larger restaurants have a Coffee Tempo!.

Little Chef had five restaurants in the Republic of Ireland, but they were sold to Egan Hospitality with two rebranded as Metzo in 2005 and the rest as Eddie Rockets.

At its peak the Little Chef chain had about 440 restaurants. As of May 2010 the Little Chef website listed 173 restaurants.[2]

History

Little Chef in Eastham, Merseyside in 2006

Caravan manufacturer Sam Alper[3] opened the first Little Chef, with 11 seats, in Reading in 1958. It was modelled after roadside diners he'd seen in the United States. By 1968 the business had expanded to twenty five Little Chef Grill bars, mostly featuring "cafeteria" self-service[4]: the two most expensive of the thirty two dishes on the menu were "gammon steak with fried egg, pineapple and french fried potatoes" and "rump steak with onions, tomatoes and french fried potatoes". Both dishes were offered at 9s 6d (equivalent to £0.475).[4] By the end of the 1960s Little Chef had become part of Gardner Merchant, itself a subsidiary of Trust Houses, which merged with Charles Forte's hotel and catering empire in 1970 to become Trust House Forte.

By the 1980s, Little Chef was established as a chain of inexpensive roadside restaurants. In the 1980s Little Chef Lodge hotels were opened alongside some Little Chefs (the hotels were later rebranded as Travelodge), and Little Chefs were opened at larger Trust House Forte service areas on motorways and trunk roads. In 1987 these service areas became known as Welcome Break after the acquisition of the smaller Welcome Break group of motorway service areas and the Happy Eater roadside restaurants, Little Chef's main rival at the time, in 1986 as part of the break up of Imperial Group. Under Forte ownership Little Chef and Happy Eater retained their separate identities.

In 1996 the catering and broadcasting conglomerate Granada successfully mounted a hostile takeover for the Forte group. Granada converted the Happy Eater chain into Little Chefs by the end of 1997, and opened Little Chefs at most of its motorway service areas. The Welcome Break chain was sold by Granada, the Little Chefs at those motorway service areas becoming a similar table service restaurant, Red Hen.

Little Chef in Bilbrough near York, A64 eastbound, North Yorkshire. This restaurant has now been refurbished and serves the new Heston menu.
A Little Chef in Ferrybridge, West Yorkshire

In 1998, Granada bought AJ's Family Restaurants, another Little Chef rival, from the "Celebrated Group" and converted all of its fifteen sites to Little Chefs. AJ's had originally been set up in 1986 by two Happy Eater directors, following Happy Eater's sale to Forte.

In 2000 Granada merged with the catering group Compass Group Holdings to form Granada Compass plc, but the two demerged in 2001 leaving Little Chef as part of Compass. At about this time some Little Chefs began serving Harry Ramsden's meals, a cross-branding exercise by Compass who also owned Harry Ramsden's, though this ended in June 2004.

The private equity business Permira bought Travelodge and Little Chef from Compass Group in December 2002 for £712 million, forming a company called TLLC. Those Little Chefs at Moto motorway service areas - formerly the Granada motorway service areas, and owned by Compass until 2006 - are owned by Moto and operate as franchised outlets.

In 2005 the company was sold to The People's Restaurant Ltd, which went into administration in early 2007. In January of that year 192 branches were saved in a rescue deal which received much publicity (see below). By December 2007 a number of sites not leased from Travelodge or Arazim (Little Chef's two main landlords) closed, as Little Chef had not been able to reach agreements with the individual landlords. With many of the franchised Little Chefs at Moto service areas expected to close as the end of that agreement in 2009 the chain will be further reduced. During 2008–09 some closed branches from 2007 were re opened at Warwick (A46), Shiptonthorpe (A614), Malton (A64) and Ings (A591). This took the total in Summer 2009 to 177. There is a belief that Little Chef would like to boost their number of sits to 200 again and have targeted Yorkshire and the North East as an area for potential growth. However, since then two more branches have closed (Guildford (A3) and South Cave West (A63)) and another at Rainton North (A1) is due to close in January due to road upgrades.

Little Chef has a spin off brand called "Little Chef Express" which Forte developed in 1995 as a rival to fast food outlets. It was offered as an option alongside the Little Chef at Markham Moor North (A1) and sites at Colchester (A12), Sparkford (A303), Eggington (A38) were also converted to the Express Format. It was also believed that many of the former Happy Eater restaurants, especially those that were close to existing Little Chefs, would be rebranded as Little Chef Express self service outlets when the final few branches were converted in 1996 but this never happened. Little Chef Expresses did later spring up in stations, shopping centres, airports, ferry terminals and as an option in Granada's self service restaurants but it is believed that the brand has now been discontinued. The roadside ones all became Burger Kings.

Competition and decline

An abandoned Little Chef in Shropshire

Several factors contributed to the decline of Little Chef, including increased competition from other chains and years of under-investment and neglect by many different owners.

From its inception until the mid 1990s Little Chef had relatively little competition from other chains with Happy Eater and AJ's Family Restaurants, which it bought over in 1986 and 1998 respectively being the main ones. However by the early 2000s the business in decline, sometimes attributed to owners from Granada onwards having extracted too much money from the business without investing in updating the format[citation needed]. Britain's roadsides had become saturated by fast food restaurants such as McDonald's, KFC, and Burger King. Granada opened several Burger Kings within or adjacent to their Little Chef sites as a response to this, making Little Chef the largest Burger King franchise in the UK.

A further challenge to Little Chef was the rise of pub restaurants such as Brewers Fayre which catered both for the business and family markets. Recently refurbished service stations began to offer food suppliers such as Marks & Spencer Simply Food and coffee chains such as Costa in place of Little Chef outlets. The construction of the motorway network meant that A-roads (along which Little Chef outlets were usually situated) were no longer used for long-distance travel.

Little Chef restaurants were looking shabby and run-down. Customers complained of poor quality food, poor value for money and disillusioned staff. High prices earned the brand the nickname 'Little Thief'. Healthy eating campaigns might also have been damaging to Little Chef due to the dishes served by the chain (see below).

In 2005 it was announced that 130 underperforming restaurants were to be closed, reducing the chain to 234 restaurants. Prior to that however, Granada had been gradually reducing the number of restaurants, from well over 300 at one time. During 2005 Travelodge Hotels Ltd (the new name for TLLC) made various announcements about the sale of some or all of the restaurants, until in October the chain was sold to The People's Restaurant Group Ltd, who planned to modernise the restaurants and introduce self service.

Changes introduced during 2006 included the opening of coffee shops under the name Coffee Tempo! within several larger branches. These 'grab and go' units were developed by Nick Smith, who joined Little Chef as development director after leading the design and implementation of the Wild Bean Café format at BP petrol stations. Little Chef also introduced a takeaway menu. Both initiatives were aimed to increase the appeal of the brand to customers unwilling to spend a long period waiting for table service.

The People's Restaurant group slashed menu prices in an attempt to attract customers. Unfortunately, the only outcome of this was less money going through the tills. It would appear that Little Chef completely ignored the competition it was faced with.

Rescue deal

An iconic Little Chef in Nottinghamshire, designed by Sam Scorer

In January 2007 it was widely reported that Little Chef had been taken into administration.[5][6]

The company was rescued on 3 January 2007 by RCapital, a UK private equity group, which paid less than £10 million. 38 of the 235 branches were not included in the sale and were closed immediately;[7] the remaining restaurants continued to operate normally.

The new owners admitted that they had a huge task in front of them, although they said that Little Chef had a future with a great deal of potential. Two restaurants later re opened, showing that Little Chef was reviewing its operations. It was announced in March 2008 that celebrity chef Heston Blumenthal was to appear in a Channel 4 documentary programme to revamp the Little Chef chain; the programme was broadcast from 19–21 January 2009,[8] and involved Blumenthal introducing a new menu and organising a refit at the Little Chef in the village of Popham, near Basingstoke. The trial was successful, with a promise from the owner that none of the dishes would change without Blumenthal's consent. Heston Blumenthal returned to Popham in February 2009 to review progress, and the owner promised that if there was a profit within three months the redesigned format would be spread to all branches. Furthermore two more former Little Chef branches would reopen, in Ings and Malton.

It was later announced that a further two Little Chef branches, at York and Kettering, would be refurbished in the style of the trial in Popham.

Traditionally, a staple of Little Chef's menu has been all day breakfasts, although some can only be bought before 11am. Nearly all the menu consists of traditional British food. Main meals options include beefburgers, steaks, haddock or cod, all with chips. Pasta meals were introduced in the early 1990s. Salads are also available. For dessert, pancakes have always been the most important feature. There is also a children's menu and a new takeaway menu. Little Chefs offer each diner a free lollipop on leaving.

Prior to the company going into administration, the People's Restaurant Group had begun to modernise the Little Chef menu, introducing 'subs' and panini.

In November 2008 during the revamp Heston Blumenthal wrote the new menu featuring some of the features famous in his restaurant, The Fat Duck, modernising old British classics. His original menu featuring Lancashire Hotpot with an oyster and buttered roast potato soup got scrapped after taking too long to make and the board of Little Chef disliking it. When shown that menu and given the option in a branch of Little Chef people thought it was "poncy"[9] and "posh" with 5:1 preferring the old menu. His altered menu featured such dishes as spit-roast chicken, a new Olympic Breakfast, ox cheeks, and new healthier options. The Telegraph newspaper reported in May 2009 that after a seven month trial, the Heston Blumenthal menu was to be rolled out across the Little Chef estate, initially at further test sites, and that only minimal changes would be made for logistical purposes.

References

  1. ^ "Little Chef enters administration". BBC News. 3 January 2007. Retrieved 11 May 2010.
  2. ^ [1]
  3. ^ http://findarticles.com/p/articles/mi_qn4158/is_20021011/ai_n12653053/pg_1 Sam Alper's obituary
  4. ^ a b "Thoughts for Food: Twenty five little chefs". Motor. nbr 3453: 53. 24 August 1968.
  5. ^ Wachman, Richard (24 December 2006). "Little Chef chain fights to stave off bankruptcy". The Guardian. London. Retrieved 11 May 2010.
  6. ^ Why Little Chef hung his hat up | The Sun |HomePage|News
  7. ^ "The road to recovery". BBC News. 5 January 2007. Retrieved 11 May 2010.
  8. ^ Cockcroft, Lucy (27 March 2008). "Heston Blumenthal to transform Little Chef - Daily Telegraph News". The Daily Telegraph. London. Retrieved 2008-03-27.
  9. ^ "Sam Wollaston on last night's TV". The Guardian. London. 20 January 2009. Retrieved 2009-05-08.
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