The Hard Sell  

I worked for this company during the heyday when it was run by Trusthouse Forte and a lot of what people are saying is unfair. Food was of the best ingredients because THF ran some of the world’s top hotels and had a reputation to maintain and customer service was high on the agenda too. If customer waiting time was perceived to be long then that was down to footfall at peak periods. You try knocking out sixty meals at a time in a small cooking area!!! What LC gave us was a high standard in roadside catering when there was little else around other than transport cafes. And let’s not forget they also gave us the first budget hotel brand in the form of Little Chef Lodge, which later became Travelodge. Another brand which has sadly lost it’s way. I am proud to have been part of the national team for LC when it was part of the THF/Forte family

Little Chef's infamy of being incredibly slow did affect their reputation somewhat, my family would joke that we'd order some food going on holiday, and they'd have it ready on our journey home! :P Even Viz took the mic, with someone on their latters page saying "If the waitress in the Scunthorpe Little Chef is reading this, I'd like to take my order now please". only for the next month someone else writing in saying "...excuse me, I was here before you." :D

The advert with Percy Sugden in was part of a series featuring ex-Corrie characters, including Terry Duckworth, Maureen Elliot and Alec Gilroy. They started in 1999 when Granada still owned Little Chef and lasted about a year and a bit, although the ad with Percy Sugden in had to be pulled after Bill Waddington died.

I was on the road a lot of during the 90's. The highlight and must of any trip was a LC stop. I've probably visited at least half of the LCs in the country during that time. Generally the quality was good, staff well trained and courteous and restaurants were clean. Although armed with the LC map, if I was in a new area I would often call customer services and tell them my route and they would give me options for my stop. I loved Little Chef. It is sadly missed.

I loved Little Chef, no doubt due to my weird childhood obsession (that continued well into my teens, or even to this day) with ring road service stations, and having two near me (Beckington and Warminster, and in my earliest memories Melksham). I made a compilation of all the adverts I could find from them a while ago (all covered here) and love seeing them contextualised.

I’m not sure what’s more depressing, the lack of love for Little Chef from all its owners, or getting a frail Percy Sugden to advertise a 2 course meal. I stopped at a Little Chef/Burger King joint outlet in Shrewsbury about 8/9 years ago. BK was busy, Little Chef had given up and their staff had gone home, at 5pm.

I remember a Little Chef and a Happy Eater being directly opposite to each other on one dual carriageway heading to/from North Wales, we'd stop at the Happy Eater on the way to Abergele and then Little Chef on the way back home. I can remember getting a Happy Eater badge so I preferred them, having grown up I didn't visit any for years until around 2015 when driving to Norfolk and stopped in a Little Chef, I honestly can't remember anything about it and I think that was part of the thing with them, they were somewhat unremarkable. Incidentally I lived around the corner from the Little Chef that was used in the finale of "Max & Paddy's Road to Nowhere", it has been turned into a curry house now but at least the building still stands ;)

I loved Little Chef and Happy Eater. Only place in the UK like it now is Brightside Diner.

If only the UK were lucky enough to get Rax. When I was in college I went to one of the few remaining Raxes in Ironton, Ohio. Delish! Like an Arby's that gives a care.

My first exposure to little chef was when it was mentioned in a crime watch episode; about 1992, still online if anyone wants to see. I’ll try send a link sometime

We used to call it theThe Little Thief because the prices were stupid 😀😀

Little Chef's website is, unexpectedly, still up! Advertising away as if it's still around!

'JUUUU-BIL-EEEEEE PAAAAANCAKES...'

I still have that “I’m a Happy Eater” badge! 😂 Have to admit I was more of a Happy Eater girl myself, but that was probably more to do with the fact there were no Little Chefs anywhere near me. I did spend part of my childhood living within a stone’s throw of a motorway service station, but that was run by Road Chef so we had the honour of getting an extremely overpriced Wimpy instead of either.

Hey,Matthew! Perhaps start a discord server?

Euro Garages took over the former sites of the Little Chef brand but didn't want to carry on with Little Chef and dropped the name and changed to EG Diner which lasted all of 6 months before they all closed it was the same menu but different names for the dishes so they didn't break any copyright rules with the owners of the Little Chef branding which was owned by another company but didn't have any chains about ,

The avatar looks to me like the Homepride man in a toque (I only learned recently that this style of hat even had a name), but in the context, that isn't really an improvement. The horror spoof turning into an 'oops, only kidding!' ending looked good on paper, but here we have what happens when you try too hard or do too well at selling the horror part. I have no doubt that nightmares resulted, and not just in the young. The song is indeed an ear worm, and will now stay with me, cheers. Is the male and female voice 'subversion' just nothing? Barely, I'll say yes, but then again this was made in an era when not sounding as expected was considered a startling punchline, in a 'hahaha, isn't that ridiculous' kind of way, so it's marginal. That quip about slow service from singing everything reminds me of a song from a French textbook and its accompanying tape way back when, in which every item being ordered by the family is recited in each verse as someone else finally decides what they want, and the poor sod serving them has to keep coming back. # Mais monsieur, je suis désolé, [person's name] n'ont pas encore décidé!# The part that stayed with me was the end, when # Tout le monde a décidé!#, then the family starts to choose dessert, and the server finally has enough and gives up, and says 'let me guess, [everyone's names] haven't decided yet!' He effectively cries 'just serve yourselves, dammit!' and stomps off. Now there's somewhere I didn't expect to see Granada! I had never heard of this brand until it called in the cameras and the 'services' of Heston Bloomin'weird. A man who Harry Hill himself even noticed was basically him but if he was a chef. My experience of this kind of café is extremely limited. There was a chain called Mother Hubbard's, which we tried a few times, but it's likely gone now. There was a place we passed by regularly on holidays called Big Wheelers, which my late granny kept calling Big Willie's for some reason, to much hilarity. It got worse when we returned from another holiday and revealed it had been renamed Walter's, and she misheard and baffled, she exclaimed "why on earth would you call a restaurant Wanker's?!" And thanks for identifying the 'halfway house' song from the Only Fools and Horses episode The Jolly Boys Outing. Another ear worm.

Granada basically ruined Little Chef for dirty profit.

Is it just me, it are those fat Charlie Little Chefs in 1 of the adverts REALLY creepy looking?

Heston Blumenawful is how The Donald describes woke: Everything he touches turns to 💩

It's the rude guy youtube channel done a dubbed over version of the first little chef ad the one where the driver see creepy little chef mascots