The Long Sutton branch was a former Little Chef restaurant located on the A17 near Long Sutton, Lincolnshire.
Opened in 1989/90, Long Sutton typified the Little Chef house design of the era with the pitched roof, double front and red bricks. The A17 is a road running from the Newark-on-Trent in Nottinghamshire to Kings Lynn in Norfolk. It feeds many towns, intersects with many routes to East Anglia and is often used by HGV drivers who are delievering cargo to the East Midlands. Thus, a Little Chef here would be sure to have plenty of passing trade and be able to attract a lot of long-distance traffic. Little Chef's owners Forte thought so too and, to maximise the restaurant's potential chose a location close to Long Sutton, a densely populated town in the area, to help encourage locals. The site chosen also had a filling station and Travelodge hotel and could be easily accessed by all traffic travelling on the A17 so the Little Chef had all angles covered.
In the 1990s/00s, a McDonald's restaurant was built on the other side of the roundabout, giving the Little Chef competition.
The site continued to trade well until 2012 when then owners R Capital decided to close 67 sites that it deemed to be underperforming with Long Sutton identified as one of these. By late August it had closed its doors, leaving Travelodge and filling station to soldier on alone.
Today, the Little Chef is now occupied by Benny's Diner, an independent.
