The Brechin branch was a former Little Chef restaurant located on the A90 near Brechin, Scotland.
The Little Chef first opened between 1980 and 1982 and site just south of Brechin. At the time it opened the road it served, the A94, was the main route from Perth to Aberdeen with the Little Chef lying almost exactly half way between the two cities. Good bit of planning that. Subsequent changes to this stretch of road saw the town of Brechin bypassed, making people less likely to stop there and use the Little Chef instead. Furthermore, by 1994, the whole of the route between Dundee and Aberdeen had been upgraded to dual carriageway and this had now become classified as the main route to the north east from the central belt (previously the A92 coast road between Dundee and Stonehaven had this status) and reclassified as A90, meaning that more traffic was routing this way and passing the Little Chef. Good news right?
Sadly, there was one problem. Although it was nicely visible, the dual carriageway upgrade had made access slightly more difficult. To get to the Little Chef from the northbound carriageway customers had to cut across the dual carriageway in a central reserve gap, a manoeuvre that not all motorists enjoy. Thus it never quite managed to fully capitalise on the northbound traffic.
In 2007, Little Chef's then parents People's Restaurant Company, went into administration. The new buyer R Capital decided to focus on the busier sites, mainly those with lodges as well and with Brechin merely a standalone restaurant, it was one of the ones which didn't transfer across.
Shortly after closure in 2007 it re-opened as an independent outfit called Troy's Diner but it sadly lasted less than a year. After this it, like Forres, was bought by local chipshop company known as the Bervie Chipper. Despite a few cosmetic changes it is still housed in the same, easily recognisable Little Chef building and the interior still keeps a lot of the original Little Chef touches such as the servery bar.
By 2015, the Bervie Chipper had ceased trading. The building was left vacant until 2017 when it reopened as Bonnybreich Coffee Bothy. This sadly closed in 2020 before the building was bought by CAM Ventures and reopened as the Angus Grill and Larder in November 2021. Angus Grill + Larder permanently closed on 7 January 2025 owing to rising operational costs, leaving the building empty once more.
Today, where once there were four, the A90 is a Little Chef free zone!