I love Little Chefs

Er...that's the restaurants. The dear Little Chef is throwing a bit of a wobbly in the kitchen at the moment. Hopefully all will get straightened out and he'll be out frying the eggs untroubled again soon.

I first fell in love with Little Chef restaurants in my childhood. You could always rely on the meals being beautifully cooked (if not entirely from fresh ingredients!) and nicely presented. There was cheerful(ish) service. You knew where you were with Little Chefs.

You still do. (I have fallen back on their sausage and mash twice in the last six months after motorway service stations let me down). Except in the last year or so, there are less people present in the restaurants. My successors as children aren't pestering parents to take them to Little Chefs any more.

There are now 3 or 4 choices of food outlet in every motorway service station. That new competition has hammered the poor Little Chef.

However, the Little Chef is still a well loved brand with something to offer. But it obviously needs a shake-up.

The chain was built up around "A" roads with Motorway service station outlets as a bit of an after-thought. One can't help but thinking that they need to cull off a lot of the old "A" road sites and somehow give their motorway service station restaurants a shot in the arm. These days, people flock to those motorway service stations like bees round a jam jar. The old "A" road Little Chef restaurants seem deserted these days.