Little Chef to close 70 restaurants

Could this be the end of the road for Little Chef?

Today I discover, from The Sun, as it happens, that the iconic restaurant chain is to close 70 of its restaurants and cut around 600 staff.

If that happens it will leave 91 restaurants and counting (down, for sure).

So much for Heston Blumenthal and the Blue Sky Thinking. Though I remember Heston looking pretty horror-struck about various aspects of the business then.

And farewell to those 1970s/80s ads where a rather sinister Little Chef would loom out at passers by offering them an Early Starter or Steak Platter.

In the end Little Chef is one of those brands, in my humble opinion, that feels as though its time has passed. There’s a certain whiff of doom about it. Over-priced, a bit tawdry, stuck in a rut, unsure of who its market is... a bit (with the exception of the price bit) like Woolworths used to be before its demise.