The Thame branch was a Little Chef restaurant located on the A418 near Thame, Oxfordshire.
Address and Onsite Information[]
ADDRESS: A418, Thame, OX9 3XA
ONSITE FACILITIES: Burger King Drive Thru, Starbucks Drive Thru, Travelodge, Esso,
History[]
Opened in 1995/96, Thame typified the Little Chef of the era. It was housed inside of a building with large windows, a pitched grey-pan tiled roof and a rectangular base. This building design was introduced in the mid 90s by Granada and was the more modern alternative to the pitched roof, double front house design.
The A418 is a road that runs from Oxfordshire to Central Bedfordshire and is used a lot by traffic. It feeds many towns and intersects with many routes to the 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 Granada thought so too and, to maximise the restaurant's potential chose a location close to the edge of Thame, a large town in the area, to help encourage locals. The site that the Little Chef was positioned at also had a filling station, Travelodge and Burger King and was positioned next to a busy roundabout so Little Chef had all angles covered.
Thame was probably one of the most distinctive and famous Little Chef sites in terms of the branding. In 2002/3, Little Chef's owners, Permira, invented a new type of Little Chef branding where the lettering of the words 'Little Chef' had a loopy shape to it. This certainly was a lot different to the typical Little Chef branding that you see today. However, when Permira handed Little Chef to the People's Restaurant Company, the group didn't like the design of the new branding and therefore didn't use it on Little Chef restaurants in the fleet. Thame was the only Little Chef site to recieve Permira's new branding. However in 2011, new owners, RCapital, liked the branding that Permira invented and decided to roll it out across the whole fleet as part of the "Wonderfully British" campaign. The branding was slightly altered in order to give the lettering a more loopy shape.
In 2017, Thame was closed following the takeover by Euro Garages. It was set to re-open as a Starbucks later in 2017 but instead continued to trade as a Burger King restaurant. The former Little Chef restaurant area was now offered as additional seating for Burger King with the Little Chef kitchen being hidden behind a fake wall.
The former Little Chef was demolished in 2021 to make way for a new-build Burger King Drive Thru.