• Our booking engine at tickets.railforums.co.uk (powered by TrainSplit) helps support the running of the forum with every ticket purchase! Find out more and ask any questions/give us feedback in this thread!

Motorway services

Status
Not open for further replies.

skyhigh

Established Member
Joined
14 Sep 2014
Messages
5,219
Interestingly, the Little Chef website is still all there, up and running!
It's very odd - the old website was replaced by the 'new' one by Kout when they bought Little Chef, but it's never been updated since it launched. The domain was re-registered on 08/08/2020, so someone is definitely still paying for it.

As I understand it, Kout bought the brand and operations but then sold on the operations only to EuroGarages. I think they paid Kout around £2m per year to licence the brand, but they obviously decided it wasn't worth it and remaining restaurants lost any 'Little Chef' branding but continued as 'EG Diner' without any replacement signage until they got round to converting them all to Greggs/Burger King/Starbucks/Sainsbury's Local. The brand is still owned by Kout, with the intention of licencing it out again. A company a friend ran was interested in taking the brand on, but Kout refused to consider a sale and instead wanted several million to licence the brand to them.

It's a shame - I was always a fan of them, but unfortunately they just didn't move with the times.

Personally I think it's useful having brands on services signs, I tend to choose where I stop based on what's on offer.
 
Sponsor Post - registered members do not see these adverts; click here to register, or click here to log in
R

RailUK Forums

Bobdogs

Member
Joined
19 Dec 2017
Messages
167
Location
Carmarthenshire
My 3 litre Toyota pick up if fuelled up at my local garage on Romney Marsh will be half way up Loch Lomond before the little yellow light comes on, why on earth would anybody buy fuel on the motorway in 2020?
Only someone of limited intelligence. I always fill up before the motorway. I have never bought anything at one of these rip off dens, with one exception. I couldn't resist the pies at Tebay. They were excellent.
 

py_megapixel

Established Member
Joined
5 Nov 2018
Messages
6,645
Location
Northern England
Only someone of limited intelligence. I always fill up before the motorway. I have never bought anything at one of these rip off dens, with one exception. I couldn't resist the pies at Tebay. They were excellent.
I don't really think it's this forum's place to make judgements about the intelligence of users of service stations. There are perfectly legitimate reasons to fill up on the motorway.

Tebay's a little different to the others because it's really a different concept; it's less like a shopping centre and more like an actual single cohesive operation, and feels less like it's trying to extort money from you. That said, it's still not cheap.
 

Bletchleyite

Veteran Member
Joined
20 Oct 2014
Messages
97,540
Location
"Marston Vale mafia"
Tebay's a little different to the others because it's really a different concept; it's less like a shopping centre and more like an actual single cohesive operation, and feels less like it's trying to extort money from you. That said, it's still not cheap.

More like a farm shop and restaurant when you just want something basic.

An ideal service area to me would have a full size Tesco Express/Sainsburys Local/Little Waitrose (not a mini one), one of the coffee chains, a newsagent/bookshop type place, some sort of sandwich shop and one of the burger chains. They're very much heading that sort of way. There is the issue of "it isn't allowed to be a destination in its own right" to which I say "why on earth not?".
 

Gathursty

Established Member
Joined
31 May 2011
Messages
2,517
Location
Wigan
No personal experience, obviously, but I suspect doglovers might congregate to compare notes, a bit like the Addington Hills just outside Croydon, where myself, sister and two of her friends spent an 'interesting' Saturday night waiting for breakdown services. :lol:

Haha, we certainly don't have those shenanigans in Wigan or if we do, I've not been invited. I'd say not the best idea to be doing that particular night time activity given Coronavirus.
 
Joined
23 May 2020
Messages
293
Location
Blandford Forum
Only someone of limited intelligence. I always fill up before the motorway. I have never bought anything at one of these rip off dens, with one exception. I couldn't resist the pies at Tebay. They were excellent.

Someone who's company pays for the fuel. I used to be confused by all the people heading for Dover who stopped for petrol before the channel crossing (this was in the days when continental fuel was significantly cheaper than UK prices) I worked with someone who got company fuel, and he told me that the company wouldn't pay for fuel bought on the continent, so you stopped at Dover for 'free fuel', then came back to Calais running on paid for fumes antil you could fill again with 'free fuel' at Dover.
 
Status
Not open for further replies.

Top