A packet of sad sandwiches and a tepid cup of tea: for years, roadside dining in the UK has offered little for motorists to write home about.
Seasoned travellers may yearn for the heyday of the 1980s and 1990s in Britain, when few long car journeys came without a scheduled refuel at a branch of Little Chef – the now defunct chain famed for its stacks of pancakes.
It is this sense of nostalgia that Alex Reilley, co-founder and chair of the restaurant and bar group Loungers, is hoping to tap into with the launch of his latest brand: roadside restaurants called Brightside.
From avocado-coloured toilet suites and booths upholstered with orange-and-brown striped fabric, to a comfort-food-inspired menu, the restaurant harks back to the glory days of car travel.
The company opened the doors to its first venue on Friday morning at the A38 at Kennford, near Exeter in Devon, in a building that was once a Little Chef. Offering diners table service and freshly cooked food, the restaurant is the first of an initial four branches, in Reilley’s attempt to “revolutionise” roadside dining.
The plan is to expand at sites on A roads, many of which, such as the A38 ‘Devon expressway’, carry large volumes of traffic, especially in peak holiday season.
“My first real exposure to hospitality was Little Chef,” 49-year-old Reilley says, recalling monthly childhood journeys from his Leicester home to visit his great-grandmother in Suffolk. “You always factored in a stop. It was something you felt was a break. If my dad was driving, it would be his first target: get to Little Chef for breakfast.”
Such was his fondness for the chain that Reilley even contemplated buying the final locations when they were sold in the middle of the last decade.
Despite a last-minute attempt to revitalise Little Chef by restaurateur and celebrity chef Heston Blumenthal – known for his food sorcery and recipes including snail porridge – the chain and “Fat Charlie” logo of a plump chef disappeared from the roadside for good in 2018.
Instead, Reilley now has nationwide ambitions for his Brightside chain, spurred by a belief that roadside pitstops have been “quite an uninspiring space” in Britain for decades. (Ironically, Reilley has never learnt to drive.)
In a country plagued by motorway jams and roadworks, driving has, Reilley says, become all about “spending the least amount of time stopping on a journey.
“We’re hopeful we’re going to put a bit of joy back into travel.”
To tempt customers, breakfast will be served until midday, with a bacon roll costing £5.95, a cappuccino £3.30, or £15.95 for “the big breakfast”. Later in the day there are burgers, pizzas and ice-cream sundaes, and the company aims to serve drinks and food within 40 minutes.
Warren and Christine Ellis were among the first customers to arrive shortly after the 8am opening, stopping for breakfast en-route to Taunton, during a week’s holiday in the West Country. “It’s a good move [to open here],” says Warren. “Going to other places in the world, services are quite dated over here.”
The first morning was not entirely without teething problems, however, with one group felt the restaurant should have delayed opening. “They should have waited till the work was finished,” says Ceri Freeman, blaming their breakfast being cold on an open back door. “I think in a week or so it’ll be booming in here.”
Gary Townsley, an Exeter taxi driver, said the decor was “really nice and the staff were great”. While he would like to be able to stop at similar roadside locations during long journeys, he found the £12.50 cooked breakfast “a bit too expensive and probably just as dear as a service station”.
Reilley’s ambition is to have as many as 100 outlets on A roads around the country, although that is still far from the 439 Little Chefs at the peak, before changing tastes and complaints of staid menus and high prices triggered its decline.
The new chain is a departure for the Bristol-headquartered company, which operates 182 of its all-day cafe and restaurant Lounges and 35 of its Cosy Club venues across the UK, and has plans to open 30 more this year.
Brightside breakfast option review
When they called it “the whole hog”, they weren’t joking.
One of the many breakfast options at Brightside, served until midday, would be enough to satisfy most hungry drivers.
The soft brioche bun arrives stacked with what seems like a full cooked breakfast: rashers of smoked streaky bacon, sausage, a fried egg, onions, tomatoes and American cheese.
The egg is cooked to perfection, the yolk bursting on contact with my fork, and along with the juicy slow-cooked tomatoes, complements the salty bacon.
Soft caramelised onions are a little too sweet for my liking, and the bright yellow American cheese is suspiciously plastic.
But the highlight of the breakfast is the juicy and well-seasoned “Proper Porker” sausage, with delicate hints of sage (made by a Bristol company called Jolly Hog, run by three brothers).
Only the bravest traveller might try to get their chops around this bun, unless prepared to continue their journey with food stains.
Delivered on a warm plate within 20 minutes of ordering, served until midday for £8.95, and washed down with a pot of tea, it is a refreshing, and tasty, change from your average service station pitstop.
The new restaurant at Kennford, along with two others – at Honiton also in Devon and Saltash in Cornwall – was bought from the company that ran the Route chain of American diners, and its staff have moved over too.
“It’s back to the future,” says restaurant consultant Peter Backman. “In the olden days you were looked after at a coaching inn. Then came the Little Chef and after that disappeared, you ended up with Burger King and coffee, and drive off again.”
He fancies Brightside’s chances if it targets the family market: “Loungers are exceedingly good operators, with attention to detail, getting the price right and looking after customers. It all depends on how it is implemented, and where they are located.”
