The Tewkesbury branch was a former Little Chef restaurant located at the A46/A435 near Tewkesbury, Gloucestershire.
Address and Onsite Information[]
ADDRESS: A46/A435 Roundabout, Tewkesbury, Gloucestershire, GL20 8NE
ONSITE FACILITIES: Texaco, Teddington Stores
History[]
Throughout the 1970s and 1980s, Forte's expansion of the Little Chef chain was a huge success. With numerous restaurants opening each year in this period, this inspired other roadside operators to expand other restaurant chains in order to be successful just like Forte. A company who were clearly inspired by Forte's success with Little Chef were Granada who saw the opportunity to enlarge their restaurant chain, AJ's. Although the expansion of AJ's wasn't as significant as Little Chef, the chain still managed to bag some good locations to operate at, one of which was Tewkesbury, located at the roundabout of the A46 and A435 just outside of Tewkesbury. Roundabout sites were always great news for restaurants as they provided easy access to all routes and the restaurants were often highly visible too. This particular restaurant was easy to see from the roundabout, thus increasing the chance of extra custom.
In the mid 90s, Forte were bought by Granada, meaning that Little Chef were now under Granada ownership along with their rival brand, Happy Eater. Looking at the figures, Granada saw that out of the three chains, Little Chef was by far the most profitable, therefore a majority of the Happy Eater restaurants were converted into Little Chefs by 1997. In 1997, AJ's received the same treatment and by 1998, most AJ's restaurants were converted into Little Chefs, including Tewkesbury.
In 2002, Little Chef was sold by the owners Compass Catering to new owners Permira of Canada, along with Travelodge. At this time there were a cull of sites with some older, standalone sites closing and sadly, Tewkesbury was one of the casualties.
The site reopened as Fox Saddlery, which was later replaced with Teddington Stores.