The Skeeby branch is a current Little Chef restaurant located on the A1 near the small village of Skeeby, North Yorkshire.
The site started life as something of an institution known as "The Clock Cafe", an independent which opened in the 1960s and was much loved by locals and long distance drivers. However, between 1972 and 1976, Forte bought the Clock Cafe and replaced it with a Little Chef restaurant. In this era Forte sent teams around the UK trying to buy up existing roadside cafes and inns in order to quickly grow Little Chef without the delays and the planning process required to build new sites from scratch. The Clock Cafe was certainly one of these cases and changed from independent to Little Chef within a short amount of time. As the building of the old Clock Cafe was still in decent shape, Forte decided to house the Little Chef inside of the original Clock Cafe building.
The Little Chef at Skeeby is positioned less than a mile south of the Scotch Corner junction, a busy junction serving two busy roads heading towards Scotland (the A1 and A66), so the Little Chef here would be sure to have plenty of passing trade and be able to attract a lot of long-distance traffic. In terms of facilities, the restaurant is accompanied by a filling station and Travelodge, which presented a great opportunity for Little Chef to attract additional custom from the facilities. These points suggest that Skeeby has the key to a successful site.
The Little Chef is still operating today and is one of the oldest surviving in the UK. The future of Skeeby is in doubt due to the upcoming upgrade of the A1 which is set to reduce access to the Little Chef.