EG Diner was the interim name given to the final 36 Little Chef restaurants after EG Group lost the rights to the Little Chef name at the end of January 2018. They were created as a placeholder while EG Group converted the restaurants into other brands. The final locations closed by October 2018.
History[]
Euro Garages (now renamed EG Group) purchased the remaining 70 Little Chef sites from Kout Food Group in early 2017. They were given a year-long license to use the Little Chef name, which expired on 31st January 2018. The original plan was to have all Little Chef branches become other EG Group brands (e.g. Starbucks, Greggs, Subway etc) by January, but this did not go to plan. Instead, there was delays so only around half the branches had been converted by the time the Little Chef license was up.
As a result on 1st February 2018, the last Little Chefs became EG Diner and a new menu (just a laminated card) was created. EG Group would then go onto convert almost all of the remaining Little Chef sites to Starbucks, Subway and Greggs. The last EG Diners were closed by October 2018.
It remains unknown whether Kout Food Group were asking too much for a renewal, or whether Euro Garages simply didn't want to pay for the name further as they were about to rebrand the sites.
Trivia[]
- Any Little Chef logos were crudely drawn over or erased for legal reasons. In some situations, huge signage was removed.
- Due to EG Diner simply being a placeholder, no real signage was ever produced for EG Diner, apart from the odd banner and decals on windows.