Restaurant chain Little Chef has been saved from disappearing from Britain's roadsides after being snapped up by a Kuwaiti company for £15 million.
The firm's Fat Charlie mascot has been a familiar sight for UK motorists for more than 50 years but its future looked uncertain when it was put up for sale earlier this year and fast food and coffee chains eyed up its sites.
But new owner Kout Food Group, which already operates a number of restaurant franchises in the Middle East, is expected to retain the Little Chef name. It is buying 81 of its 83 sites.
It has paid somewhat less than the £20 million first mooted when the chain was put up for sale by turnaround firm RCapital - which is retaining two of the restaurants.
RCapital had acquired Little Chef for a nominal fee in 2007 after it collapsed into administration before an overhaul including a menu revamp by celebrity chef Heston Blumenthal. It said it had brought the business back into profitability.
Bidders for Little Chef were thought to include McDonald's, KFC and Costa. It was believed they wanted to pick up the restaurant's sites but ditch the name.
However, RCapital's chief executive Jamie Constable said the new owners would "take the brand to the next stage". They will hope to capitalise on a breakfast and travel dining market estimated at £3 billion in the UK.
Fadwa Al Homaizi, chairman of Kout Food Group Restaurants UK, said: "KGFR-UK has exciting plans to revitalise the Little Chef brand.
"Little Chef will benefit from a process of brand renewal in keeping with current trends, supported by traditional British values."
Kout already operates franchises in Kuwait for Burger King, Pizza Hut and Taco Bell as well as a number of Middle Eastern brands. In the UK it owns Maison Blanc restaurants as well as more than 40 Burger King and KFC units.
Little Chef employs 1100 staff at 83 sites and serves more than six million customers a year. It had 234 outlets with 4,000 staff at the time of its 2007 collapse.
Famous for its large "Olympic" breakfasts, it began life as an 11-seat restaurant in Reading, Berkshire in 1958.
Why are you making commenting on The Herald only available to subscribers?
It should have been a safe space for informed debate, somewhere for readers to discuss issues around the biggest stories of the day, but all too often the below the line comments on most websites have become bogged down by off-topic discussions and abuse.
heraldscotland.com is tackling this problem by allowing only subscribers to comment.
We are doing this to improve the experience for our loyal readers and we believe it will reduce the ability of trolls and troublemakers, who occasionally find their way onto our site, to abuse our journalists and readers. We also hope it will help the comments section fulfil its promise as a part of Scotland's conversation with itself.
We are lucky at The Herald. We are read by an informed, educated readership who can add their knowledge and insights to our stories.
That is invaluable.
We are making the subscriber-only change to support our valued readers, who tell us they don't want the site cluttered up with irrelevant comments, untruths and abuse.
In the past, the journalist’s job was to collect and distribute information to the audience. Technology means that readers can shape a discussion. We look forward to hearing from you on heraldscotland.com
Comments & Moderation
Readers’ comments: You are personally liable for the content of any comments you upload to this website, so please act responsibly. We do not pre-moderate or monitor readers’ comments appearing on our websites, but we do post-moderate in response to complaints we receive or otherwise when a potential problem comes to our attention. You can make a complaint by using the ‘report this post’ link . We may then apply our discretion under the user terms to amend or delete comments.
Post moderation is undertaken full-time 9am-6pm on weekdays, and on a part-time basis outwith those hours.
Read the rules hereComments are closed on this article