The Malton branch was a former Little Chef restaurant located on the A64 near Malton, North Yorkshire.
Address and Onsite Information[]
ADDRESS: Malton Road, York, YO60 7SG
ONSITE FACILITIES: Huckleberry's American Diner; BP, Londis (on opposite side of the road)
Opened in 1984/85, Malton was one of six branches to be built on the A64 (the others being Leeds, Bramham, Staxton, York East and York West). The restaurant was housed inside of a rather unique building with a single front, pitched roof, wooden gable and looked to be made of a type of stone. Certainly a site with a bit of charm!
Located on the A64 between York and Scarborough, the Little Chef at Malton was a great place to dine for those travellers driving to the coast. Also being directly opposite a filling station (currently operating as BP and previously Gulf), this presented a great opportunity for Little Chef to attract additional custom from the facility. These points suggest that Malton was a well located branch.
In 2007, Little Chefs parents, who by now were People's Restaurant Group, hit financial problems and the brand was taken by new owners, venture capitalists R Capital. Not all the sites transferred over and Malton was one of the 41 to be closed in 2007. However, this wasn't the end for Malton as good news came to the site in 2009.
In 2008/9, Little Chef had another new owner, R Capital, and the restaurants were headed up by Ian Pegler, who had previously headed up Little Chef in the latter Forte days. Pegler was on a mission to grow the number of restaurants and looked at some of the former sites which may still be profitable. In 2008/9 he set about re-opening 5 branches, one of which was Malton. As the restaurant was still fully furnished, all Little Chef had to do was to give the restaurant a paint and all was good. An abandoned image of this site was featured in Big Chef Takes on Little Chef.
Sadly, a few years down the line and with a new MD in place R Capital decided to close 67 Little Chefs that it considered to be underperforming and, for the second time, Malton found itself on the closure list. It closed in 2012.
After closure, the signage remained on the building for a short while until it was finally removed. Since then, the site has been the home of five independently-owned restuarants: firstly, it was Hickory's Roadhouse and Grill, an American themed diner. It then became Huckleberry's - another American themed diner in 2015. In 2018 Huckleberry's closed and the site became another independent known as Holy Moly's. Holy Moly's then closed in 2019, and was replaced with Kushty's Cafe, which was in turn replaced with Cafe 64.
Huckleberry's American Diner later reopened in the building in 2021.
