The Membury North branch was a former Little Chef restaurant located at Membury Services on the eastbound side of the M4 near Membury, West Berkshire.
Membury Services first opened in 1972 by a motorway service operator known as Ross and was built as a dual sided service station with each side sporting a filling station, a facility building and later a hotel. In the 1980s, both sides of the services saw the addition of a Happy Eater restaurant. The Happy Eaters on each side were housed inside of buildings which were separate to the main facility building, sporting the Happy Eater house design with the trademark Happy Eater chimney and weather vane.
In the early-mid 1980s, the services saw an operator change from Ross to Welcome Break.
Around 1993, Forte hatched a plan to change all Happy Eaters to Little Chefs as the brand made more money. Both Membury branches had joined the Little Chef ranks by 1995. They continued to soldier on happily in this way.
Before the Granada takeover, Forte decided to provide most Welcome Break service areas (including Membury) with Little Chef restaurants. Some Welcome Break Little Chef sites (like Membury) replaced previous restaurants such as Happy Eater. Leaflets were produced by Forte in order to give travellers a guide of all of the Little Chef locations at Welcome Break sites. However, when Welcome Break were sold in 1996, they were forced to create their own restaurant and hotel alternatives including Red Hen and Welcome Lodge. However, where the westbound Red Hen was housed inside of the former Little Chef building, the Red Hen at Membury North was positioned inside of the main facility building.
Instead, the old Little Chef at Membury North became a staff training centre for the chain. It is unknown when it became unused but presumably it was during the mid to late 2000s when the chain drastically reduced in size, making the need for staff training centres less important.
In 2004, Welcome Break realised that the Red Hen chain didn't make as much money as Little Chef and decided to move away from the table service option altogether. As a result, all of the Red Hen restaurants (including the Memburys) ceased trading.
In 2012, the former Membury North Little Chef became a Starbucks. In 2013, Membury South also became a Starbucks.
