Little Chef

[Jameshow]

Don’t know if I agree, most services these days just serve up a choice of ultra processed fast food.

If travel regularly over to Europe you realise how bad ours are.

Gloucester and tebay excepted...

A road cafes are a better bet tbh.

 

[oldwheels]

They were a franchise so standards would be a bit variable. Never had any complaints myself and they were very handy as there was not much choice in my main travelling days. Where else would I get breakfast at 0630 in rural Argyll?

Reply to my own question as to where to get breakfast in Argyll. The answer as I found out is nowhere too early. I had skipped the Little Chef at Tyndrum and thought I would continue to Oban for breakfast. At 0930 there was only one place open and I got rudely ejected for expecting cooked food at such an unearthly early hour.
David MacBrayne as it was then had excellent breakfasts on their larger ferries so I got fed there.

 

[oldwheels]

They weren't franchises. The overall Licence changed hands a number of times over the years. wiki worth reading.

Strange. I have always had the impression that they were franchised and I did look into that business model once as I could have been tempted to take one on.
As I remember it was an exhibition for caterers in the Kelvin Hall in Glasgow.

 

[presta]

It must be about 30 years since I last bought food at a motorway service station, I just took my own.

 

[Drago]

If travel regularly over to Europe you realise how bad ours are.

I sort of see where you're coming from, but as good as the good can be over there the bad can be atrocious. If it casts a shadow they'll serve it at the roadside in France, and it isn't all delightfully quaint pastries served with a flavoursome local light beer.

 

[cyberknight]

Don’t know if I agree, most services these days just serve up a choice of ultra processed fast food.

If travel regularly over to Europe you realise how bad ours are.

indeed the old little chef i mentioned has a burger king in it

 

[lazybloke]

As a student I went through a temping agency for holiday jobs; a strange mixture of office, shop and kitchen work, including one shift in the Dorking branch of Little Chef, way back in the 1980s. Not glamourous.

Probably the last time I ate in one; likely a breakfast and the pancakes. I can vaguely recall a menu in a perspex stand, but not what was on it. What else did they serve?

 

[lazybloke]

Was always puzzled was the Happy Eater logo on the roadside signs. What seemed to me at the time a tomato trying to make itself throw up. Every time I passed one of the signs I wondered what idiot designed it for a food establishment and what idiot at head office signed it off for use.

"Unhappy Vomiter" I think Ben Elton called them. Probably be on the internet somewhere, from the first series of Friday Night Live (mid-1980s).

 

[Andy in Germany]

I have vague memories of going to one near Stoke with my parents. I went several times with my family on the way from Birmingham to Manchester in the late eighties. I recall seeing it abandoned a few years later.

 

[Cycleops]

As a student I went through a temping agency for holiday jobs; a strange mixture of office, shop and kitchen work, including one shift in the Dorking branch of Little Chef, way back in the 1980s. Not glamourous.

Probably the last time I ate in one; likely a breakfast and the pancakes. I can vaguely recall a menu in a perspex stand, but not what was on it. What else did they serve?

I remember having a guy working with me who said when I asked him about previous jobs (he'd had quite a few) that he was a chef. I asked where and he said Little Chef, I had to laugh.

Don't know what was on the menu but it can't have been more appetising than the perspex stand.

 

[EltonFrog]

As a student I went through a temping agency for holiday jobs; a strange mixture of office, shop and kitchen work, including one shift in the Dorking branch of Little Chef, way back in the 1980s. Not glamourous.

Probably the last time I ate in one; likely a breakfast and the pancakes. I can vaguely recall a menu in a perspex stand, but not what was on it. What else did they serve?

I used to go to that particular branch regularly in the early 8Os, before the M25 was completed.

 

[gbb]

My first job was with Little Chef after leaving school in 1975, East Stoke on the A46 near Bingham.
There was only really Happy Eater at that time I seem to remember. I cooked, washed, cleaned and served and generally enjoyed it, customers were either families travelling or more regularly, reps.

It was clean, Buddy Holly on loop, ours was quite popular and always seemed busy so I assume it wasn't seen as that bad at the time.
Sweet pancakes with either ice cream and sauce or maple syrup, plaice and chips with garden peas, sirloin or rump steak was a favourite for those who were on the expenses,

I've had worse jobs, I've had worse food. Ironically they offered me a trainee managers course, at 16 with no idea what I wanted and fairly unconfident, I rejected the idea. An opportunity missed given the explosion of the fast food industry...which let's face it, is exactly what Little Chef et Al, were forerunners of, nothing more, nothing less

 

[Brandane]

I've had worse food.

Agreed. At least they were all consistent and you knew what you were getting.
The current offering at motorway services makes me want to pass them by and get to my destination quicker.
M&S food is ok, again you know what you are getting. But the prices are silly.

 

[Profpointy]

I went to the one in Bicester quite a few times, about 18/20 years ago. One day I ordered an early starter breakfast, I was informed by the waitress that they had no eggs, so looking at the menu I said out loud to myself, what shall I have? And the waitress, suggested without the slightest hint of irony that I have an omelette.

the troubling aspect of that is not that the waitress was dim, but that they had some kind of pre-cooked omelettes on hand. I seem to recall overhearing a similar exchange in little chef somewhere.

 

[Cycleops]

the troubling aspect of that is not that the waitress was dim, but that they had some kind of pre-cooked omelettes on hand. I seem to recall overhearing a similar exchange in little chef somewhere.

That was the major part of its downfall, the food was mostly pre prepared and as expectations grew it was seen as dull and tired, same as the boil-in- the -bag pub food.
At least fast food joints cook their stuff fresh.