Little Chef
Alper based the Little Chef concept on the small diners he had seen while marketing his caravans in the United States. The first restaurant opened near Reading in Berkshire in 1958 and had just eleven seats. Based principally on Britain's A-roads, they were ideally suited to the new breed of travellers taking to the expanding road network and soon Little Chefs with their now iconic logo were springing up all over the country. With little or no commercial competition they proved remarkably popular and within ten years the brand had been subsumed into the Gardner Merchant group of companies which eventually became a part of Trust House Forte. Continuing to innovate, Little Chef introduced cheap travellers' hotels alongside some of the restaurants. By 1996 the brand was taken over by the Granada Corporation at which point Alper sold his interest in the company.
Read more about this topic: Sam Alper
Famous quotes containing the word chef:
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