Activities

Little Chef is Britain's largest roadside restaurant chain, with 176 outlets along major roads and motorways. It was rescued from administration in January 2008 by private equity group RCapital

The group, which dates back to the late 1950s, now serves more than 20 million customers in its waitress-served restaurants each year.
 
Reflecting its progress through the hands of Forte, Granada, and Compass, Little Chef is co-sited with 115 Travelodge budget hotels. Other co-locations that reflected the company's past owners - two sites at Welcome Break motorway service areas and 25 on the Moto motorway service areas owned by Compass - have been offloaded. 

In October 2005, Little Chef became a standalone chain under new owner the Peoples Restaurant Group, a status it continues to hold under RCapital.

At one point the group was the UK's largest Burger King franchisee with 111 Burger King outlets, a figure that has since whittled down to around 30 units. Little Chef also operates its own Coffee Tempo! grab-and-go units and, in late 2008, hired three-Michelin-starred chef Heston Blumenthal to revamp its menus.

Timeline

• 1958: Trust Houses Group (THG) opens the first Little Chef in Reading with an eleven-seater snack bar.
• 1970: THG, which now has 44 Little Chef roadside restaurants, merges with Forte Holdings to become Trusthouse Forte.
• 1986: Little Chef now has 270 sites. Of these, 16 are part of motorway service areas and seven include lodges. Sister brands within the group include Welcome Break service areas and Happy Eater roadside restaurants.
• 1995: Forte announces plans to wind down Happy Eater and convert the restaurants into Little Chefs. Fourteen are converted in the six months to July.
• 1996: Little Chef becomes part of the Granada Group following its hostile takeover of Forte. Granada announces a revamp of the chain to extend its attraction from its core base of fortysomethings to people in their 20s and 30s.
• July 2000: Little Chef and Travelodge become part of contract caterer Compass following its £1b merger with the Granada Group and subsequent demerger in February 2001.
• Feb 2003: Venture capital firm Permira buys the 368-strong Little Chef chain, along with the 220 Travelodge budget hotels, from Compass for £712m. The two brands become the TLLC Group.
• September 2004: TLLC puts 38 Little Chef restaurants up for sale for a combined price tag of about £10m.
• November 2004: Permira announces plans to put Little Chef on the market next spring for between £30m and £50m Tim Scobie, chief executive of the restaurants, is replaced by Grant Hearn, chief executive of Travelodge. At this stage, the plan appears to be to keep the 115 restaurants co-located with Travelodges and sell the 118 standalone restaurants. .
• July 2005: Little Chef reveals that it is in exclusive talks with Lawrence Wosskow and Simon Heath (co-founders of the Out of Town restaurant group) for an autumn sale of all 233 Little Chefs, along with the brand name, for around £55m. Restaurant group Paramount was among five failed bidders for the chain.
• October 2005: Little Chef  is sold for more than £52m to the Peoples Restaurant Group, the takeover vehicle set up by Heath and Wosskow. The new owners promise to slash prices to revitalise the chain. 
• February 2006: Little Chef opens its first Coffee Tempo! grab-and-go unit at the Amesbury restaurant in Wiltshire. It is the first of 17 units planned for roll-out before Easter at a cost of £1.1m.
• February 2006: Little Chef sells 65 sites to Israeli property investor Arazim Investment in a £60.3m, 35-year sale-and-leaseback deal. It includes a 56-bedroom hotel run by Little Chef in Pontefract, nine sites with Burger King franchises, but no sites co-located with Travelodges.
• December 2006: News emerges that the 235-strong roadside chain is seeking a refinancing package with a consortium of US to avert bankruptcy. Over the Christmas break, Little Chef is said to face administration the following week if last-ditch weekend crisis talks fail.
• January 2007: Little Chef agrees to sell 196 of its 234 restaurant to venture capital group RCapital for less than £10m the same afternoon that it goes into administration. Administrator PricewaterhouseCoopers seeks a buyer for the remaining 38 sites.
• March 2008: Little Chef announces that three-Michelin-starred chef Heston Blumenthal is to help it revamp the brand with a new menu.
• November 2008: Little Chef has unveils a new look and a trial menu developed by Heston Blumenthal at its Popham restaurant on the A303 near Winchester in Hampshire.
  January 2009: Heston Blumenthal’s work revamping the Popham restaurant is followed in Channel 4 series Big Chef Little Chef.
• May 2009: Little Chef announces that it will roll-out Heston Blumenthal’s revamped menu following a successful six-month pilot in Popham.
• July 2009: Little Chef converts its York branch to the Popham style with Blumenthal’s menu, followed by the West Kettering restaurant in early August. Chief executive Ian Pegler has 10 more sites ready for conversion if the latest pilots prove successful.

Financial snapshot

Little Chef is expected to achieve profits of £3m on sales of £77m in 2009, compared with 2008’s profits of £2m on a flat turnover of £72m.

Operating data

Number of restaurants: 176
Number of customers served each year: around 20 million
Number of Coffee Tempo outlets: 20
Number of Burger King concessions: 30
Number of restaurants co-located with Travelodge: 115

Chief executive

Ian Pegler

Key directors

Marketing director: Cathy Stevenson
Finance director: Sarah West
Commercial director: Mike James
Human resources director: Tracey Mulligan