Mystery behind why you never see Little Chefs anymore

Once upon a time at the side of many roads in Britain, there were spots you could pull into for a bit of a rest and a bite to eat.

We're not talking about a full blown service station that sits astride the motorways and has pretty much everything you'd need for a day out.

No, this was more of an A-road thing and this may just be my memory talking, but they always seemed to be located near roundabouts.

Often they were little more than a car park, a Travelodge (which used to be Little Chef Lodges), a Burger King and of course a Little Chef, with perhaps a petrol station tucked away somewhere, but these waypoints along the road did well enough to keep people going.

Spare a thought for that red brick oasis which no longer exists. (Margaret Clough via Creative Commons)

Only you don't see Little Chefs around these days and you actually haven't for quite some time now, so what happened to the place?

Back at their peak in the 90s, there were 439 Little Chefs scattered around the UK and the sign with the pudgy little guy on a red background (his nickname was 'Fat Charlie') was a regular feature of the roads.

The food may not have been the best - though we shall hear no slander of the Olympic Breakfast around these parts - but it was a place where someone on a long drive could sit down and have a meal free of the rushed nature of fast food.

If you needed something quick you'd go to the Burger King next door, if you really needed a break you went into the Little Chef.

Meanwhile, for those of us of a certain generation who only really went into Little Chef as kids, it did the job and you got to pick a lollipop on the way out while mum and dad paid for the meal.

So that was great.

By the late 90s, Little Chef seemed to have conquered Britain's roads, so where then did it all go wrong?

Rest in peace Fat Charlie, you had a good 60 year run. (Daniel Berehulak/Getty Images)

It turns out having 439 locations is rather a lot to handle, and according to Little Chef's former head of operations Becky Parr-Phillips, the company's owners decided they wanted to do that classic business move of cutting costs and increasing profits, which of course never ever goes wrong in the long term does it?

She told the BBC there was a 'gradual' decline and customers got angry with the changes that were meant to wring as much profit from the business as possible.

She said: "There were closures, the prices were hiked, you know the guests did start to call it Little Thief rather than Little Chef."

Little Chef changed hands several times during the late 90s and mid 00s, and the number of restaurants started dropping until in 2005 it was announced that a whole 130 places would be going at the same time, leaving the nation with 234 restaurants.

By now those dominant days of 439 Little Chefs seemed a long way off, and after being sold again Little Chef went into administration in 2006.

Little Chef was sold off once more and not every branch went with it as the franchise shed another 38 locations, and more followed it in the years to come.

There's a sight you'll probably never see again by the British roadside. (Daniel Berehulak/Getty Images)

In 2009 came celebrity chef Heston Blumenthal and his show Big Chef Takes on Little Chef, where he brought in a new menu and refurbished one of the restaurants in Popham to see if the changes would work.

His menu went down well with critics but was never actually rolled out to more than a handful of Little Chefs, and the number of restaurants overall continued to tumble further downwards.

By 2013 every menu item Blumenthal had introduced was completely gone, and a couple of months later the whole operation was sold yet again and numbered just 78 locations.

Sold again in 2017, Little Chef staggered on with more restaurant closures and shorter opening times until the following year when Fat Charlie was put out of his misery one last time.

Little Chef had started in 1958 and in 2018 finally closed down for good, so that's why you haven't seen any for at least the past six years.

Now what's left of them either sit as derelict husks by the roadside or have been turned into coffee shops and fast food outlets.

Was Little Chef better than what replaced it? We don't know, but we've lost something we may never regain.

Topics: UK News, Food And Drink, Business

Joe Harker

Joe graduated from the University of Salford with a degree in Journalism and worked for Reach before joining the LADbible Group. When not writing he enjoys the nerdier things in life like painting wargaming miniatures and chatting with other nerds on the internet. He's also spent a few years coaching fencing. Contact him via [email protected]

@MrJoeHarker