Activities

Little Chef is Britain's largest roadside restaurant chain, with 233 outlets along major roads and motorways.

The group, which dates back to the late 1950s, now serves more than 20 million customers in its waitress-served restaurants each year.
 
Little Chef is the UK’s largest Burger King franchisee, with 111 Burger King outlets on its sites.

Reflecting its progress through the hands of Forte, Granada, and Compass, Little Chef has two sites co-located at Welcome Break motorway service areas and 25 on the Moto motorway service areas owned by Compass. Travelodge budget hotels are co-sited with 115 Little Chefs.

In October 2005, Little Chef became a standalone chain under new owner the Peoples Restaurant Group.

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.
  

Operating data

Turnover: more than £100m

Number of outlets: 235

Number of employees: about 4,700

Strategy

"The potential for this business is enormous and we look forward to bringing the brand back to where it used to be by creating a restaurant business that exceeds our customers' expectations in terms of variety, quality and value."

Source: chief executive Simon Heath, Caterer & Hotelkeeper, 20 October 2005

Chief executive

Simon Heath

Key directors

Chairman: Lawrence Wosskow
Development director: Nick Smith
Marketing director: Joanne Blake
Finance director: Derek Leishman
Retail development director, South: Angie Warren
Retail development director, North: Steve Burns

Contact

Gainsborough House
Houghton Hall Office Park
Dunstable
Bedfordshire
LU5 5XF

Tel: 01582 860 200

Website: http://www.little-chef.co.uk

Commentary

Tim Scoble, the first chief executive of Little Chef under Permira, reckoned it would take three years to bring the brand into the 21st century, although he was replaced less than three months after making this statement as Permira prepared to flog-off the chain.

He inherited, he says, “an incredibly tired and badly run” business hobbled by “enormously” raised prices that had won the chain the nickname “Little Thief”.

He set about remedying what he described as eight years of neglect in terms of training, brand development and effective financial business administration.

Scoble strengthened the operation structure, launched a major recruitment and training drive and stripped out the confusing and uneconomic bundle of add-ons (which included such franchises as Wiseguy Pizza, Ritazza Coffee, Upper Crust and Harry Ramsden’s) although he retained the lucrative Burger King business.

In readiness for the eventual flog-off, Scoble’s team has trialled new site designs at a small number of development sites including the flagship new-look restaurant at Thame in Oxfordshire. They have introduced new menus, including healthier options, cut menu prices, and tested “grab and go” counters to improve service and speed up delivery times.

The sale of the roadside chain to the founders of the Out of Town restaurant group completed in October and the new owners set about cutting prices further to revitalise the chain.

In February, 2006, they launched the first in a planned line of own-brand grab-and-go units within the Amesbury restaurant in Wiltshire. The units will occupy an average 15sq m inside the restaurants. It is hoped they will attract 1,400-2,100 customers spending between £3,000-£4,000 a week.