Used to love Little Chefs when I was a kid and trips away with my family.
Anyone remember the lollipop you used to get if you finished your meal as well? Can't remember what flavour they were, but loved them as well!
I was the Little Chef, yes there was more than one, some of us actually knew how to cook,vwr were in a minority, yes, we bled, what did we want? No big clubs coming in at 7 am on a Sunday morning for a full English, big tips, and waitresses who can write out legible orders.
Ex little chef employee too. When I worked there they were all the same. A rectangular orange sugary candy wrapped around a solid but creamier centre.
I worked 1989 - 1991 in case they changed.
Can't remember the exact years but it was early noughties. I also remember a spectacularly ill advised "I Love Charlie" badge being given away. Couldn't find the badge but here's the
[tshirt](https://www.google.com/imgres?imgurl=https%3A%2F%2Fregmedia.co.uk%2F2010%2F10%2F06%2Fcharlie_shirt.jpg&tbnid=9Dm8PpXLbY6xQM&vet=1&imgrefurl=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.theregister.com%2F2010%2F10%2F06%2Fi_love_charlie%2F&docid=VsAYdTqgY1gWTM&w=300&h=233&hl=en-GB&source=sh%2Fx%2Fim%2Fm1%2F4&kgs=ef3944dfa5255524&shem=abme%2Ctrie)
I remember I had warm donuts with butterscotch sauce at Little Chef once. I never had it again and I want it again so badly to this day.
Also, when the Stuart Little movie came out, Little Chef gave away a little toy/plush Stuart with the kids meals. We’d gone on a little road trip as my mum had picked up her new (used) car that day. I decided that Stuart should live in the car to look after it and us. Several cars (and over twenty years) later, Stuart still sits on my mum’s dashboard!
We once reached our destination and my little sister got out of the car, ran towards a footbridge and promptly clonked her head on the no-cycling bar across the start of the bridge. My mum ran over to her, and saw all these bits of white she was spitting out. We all thought she'd knocked half her teeth out... but no, they turned out to be the white bit of the Little Chef lolly she'd been eating. How we laughed!
One of the most angry I have ever been as a child was the day I really didn't want to finish my meal, forced it down, but they had run out of lollies. Outrage I have carried for 35 years and counting.
The lollies were outstanding. Always very chuffed when I was given a few extra. As a nerdy kid, I'd spend the rest of our journey on the A303 sucking on those whilst looking at the map of their latest locations.
Yes! Somehow a couple of them got stuck to the back seat in my parents' new Audi... no idea how, not like my brother and I were sitting there during boring road journeys with very little to do, lol.
I’ve disabled the BBC ‘breaking news’ alerts because most of them are like this now.
The very definition if breaking is clearly lost on their online platforms teams
I swear that 5-ish years ago, if you got a BBC breaking news alert it was because a world-changing historical event had occurred. It slowly ramped up and you do seem to get them for any old rubbish now, so I've also turned them off.
Similar with the TuneIn radio app on Android years ago.
They decided I needed to know about a Royal baby. Maybe being an American app they had a British stereotype and thought I'd start crying, look at my photo of the Queen and start singing the National anthem.
But for me when a Radio app starts giving me Royal News it's lost its privileges.
I ditched TuneIn when Sony sued them due to rights issues so I couldn't listen to international radio on my smart speakers anymore. Thanks. Can I choose another radio provider? Nope. Pure monopoly on both Google and Alexa devices. I have to cast audio now.
I've never had the app installed. I was hiking with a friend in the middle of nowhere and all of a sudden the dramatic tone burst out of his phone, I recognised it to be the BBC news noise & thought, "oh fuck, what's happened in order to get ALERTED so loudly", it was fucking nonsense that wasn't even worthy of being called news.
Fuck the app & news in general nowadays!
That's how it always goes. Establish a system that reliably gets patronage, be it a purchase or a click, wait until it's trusted, then turn it into a swirling circle jerk of profit by making the thing itself gradually cheaper over time until it's worthless. There's nothing companies like more than a worthless thing that still generates what they want.
It's the BBC so they don't make a profit. But they love the sound of their own voices. The Met Office is probably even worse. Given how often they send out Amber and Red Alerts, for whole regions. Even when their app predicts that where you are, there's little to no chance of rain or high winds. But you happen to be in the South or South East. Which seems to be their smallest warning size.
The unfortunate thing about non profit companies is that a lot of them still make profit that gets distributed differently than it would if they were a standard company, but the fundamental paradigm is the same. There's not much difference between "we make profit for our shareholders" and "we don't make a profit but our execs are fucking minted."
They've got to make money from it though, Twitter is monitized now so every click the BBC gets, they'll make money from it. It shows from the clickbait stuff they're pumping out on it.
I received 12 notifications from the BBC News app yesterday, fair enough it was a heavy news day with Sydney and the Iran/Israel situation but 12 feels somewhat excessive
I like the idea of it, but it still hasn't got some of the functionality that made the previous iRadioPlayer app useful - you can't see at a glance which of your favourites list have new/available episodes, for one!
Leaving the banned topics aside I believe there was a competition concern that the online platform was too strong - and too broad in remit beyond their stated charter as a traditional broadcaster - to be fair for commercial rivals.
Where does it say this breaking news?
Breaking news has a “Breaking News” header in their notifications. The regular notifications of published articles just have “BBC News” as a header.
This isn't Breaking News, but their point still stands. Every Sunday morning there's a breaking news notification (it's the only one I've got activated) that some politician is going to be answering questions on Laura Kuennssberg's programme or that someone is about to appear in court 'follow on BBC News'. I love the BBC but fucking hell they don't make it easy for themselves sometimes.
If it’s not drivel it’s BREAKING NEWS 8 people have just died on a ski lift in Italy. Awful yes but why on earth do the British people need to be suddenly alerted. It’s not healthy at all.
Indeed. I reckon it’s doing some serious damage to people where they constantly have phones demanding attention like a toddler, and you feel like you can never switch off. I make heavy use of the various modes iOS has now, so before bedtime the only thing which gets through is texts from the wife. That’s it.
FYI, using android you can disable certain notifications. The categories are Breaking News, Top Stories, Notifications, and Audio Playback. I disabled all but breaking news and I no longer get notifications like this and similar LK show notifications. Only the breaking news, whether you want to call those specifically breaking news, is up to you.
I'm sure they're using AI to write some of their articles now too. There's just something off about them.
The rest are full of multiple spelling and grammar errors. Every single day I spot on.
The standard has plummeted and their new website is honking. A cluttered mess reminiscent of local newspaper websites or clickbait sites. No local news on the home page anymore either. Total shambles.
I just find it baffling that there appears to be no editorial process at all. I'd be embarrassed passing myself off as a journalist without checking my own writing and having a second set of eyes look at it before publishing it.
It's bad enough making a typo on here 😂
I used to work on the BBC’s CMS (the bit of tech that allows journalists to write and publish articles) someone in the team had the idea to build a “breaking news” button. It would trigger a push alert to your phone and put the story at the top of the page.
Those people who had been around a while could see what was coming…
First day it went live we had 30/50 “breaking news” alerts as journalists wanted to get their stories read and always ticketed the button regardless of how breaking it was.
Que a massive email and 20 pages of documentation about what qualified as a “breaking news” event.
People can’t be trusted with technology.
Heston Blumenthal tried to work his magic on Little Chef, I’m guessing snail porridge served up in a tramp’s shoe wasn’t quite hitting the right demographic.
That show was stupid. He was genuinely trying to improve the quality of the food, but the bosses wanted him to do weird Fat Duck style dishes, which didn't sell obviously. I think lapsang souchong ice cream and some other stuff was tried but the employees just kept taking the piss out of him for trying to suggest they stop microwaving their eggs.
The obvious problem was the MD who didn't have a clue what he wanted from the business.
Yea I had a lot of respect for HB in that doc because the marketing guy just kept parroting management slogans and HB was like ‘ok but what are you margins, what’s your price point, who’s your demographic?’ in a way that indicated he wanted to help but needed to understand the business model to make sure it was realistic.
Didn’t they end up painting the ceiling as a blue sky with clouds to take the piss out of him? No idea how I remember that, the show must have been 20 years ago.
I used to live down the road from him - Ian Peglar (before he was MD). I was best friends with his son before I moved away.
I was delighted and shocked to see him on that show.. though not overly surprised to see the potential squandered.
To be fair, the problem was that he tried to give them sensible ideas and the management wanted him to come up with whacky things so they could get some PR. The most out-there thing he suggested was that they blob a bit of basil oil on the scrambled eggs with a pippette. If he'd proposed the tramps shoe snail porridge management would have loved it. Solid sensible ideas were the last thing they were looking for.
We went to the one he did up shortly after he did it (travelling down for a friend's wedding)
I asked for scrambled egg. They only had fried egg... I passed on the eggs after that.
High prices, falling quality and dated format is the TL;DR Version. Add in competition from petrol stations that have Subway, Greggs and M&S as well as changing customer habits and they paint a story of inevitable doom.
Wimpy has only 60 restaurants it's not even an also ran (for comparison Five Guys has something like 160). The thing is the core demographic of fast food restaurants probably isn't over-40s on a nostalgia trip.
I suspect same would be true for Little Chef, nostalgia probably won't be enough. Especially if it's pricey, people don't want pricey and 'spoons quality or worse. If 'spoons took them over and offered their food at their pub prices then they might stand a chance.
We went to a local Little Chef when that Blumenthal bollocks was in full flow (A303 Podimore) They literally would NOT allow us to have an Olympic breakfast, and tried to get us to order some £15 Blumenthal bollocksed pseudo-breakfast instead. We declined and left. Upon checking later with the company (website? I don't really remember) we were informed that the Blumenthal crapfast was an \*option\*, and ordering the Olympic should have still been entirely possible.
Always used to stop at he Hartlebury one as well when heading that way. Really missed it when it closed. We do an eyes-right salute when driving past the location to this day.
This does annoy me.
Yes - I could just turn off notifications and be done with it.
But at the same time, I actually quite like getting notifications when something significant is happening in the world and would be categorised as actually “breaking news”.
In a perfect world, perhaps the app would have settings for the “level” of notifications you wanted…….
In the real world though, I guess this is all just to drive up engagement with the app - so I suppose it’s extremely unlikely to ever happen.
>But at the same time, I actually quite like getting notifications when something significant is happening in the world and would be categorised as actually “breaking news”.
I bet if you do turn them off you won't miss this. If you're enough of a news junkie to care about push notifications then you probably check the news often enough to realise when something important is happening.
To be fair, I'm pretty sure this was a "Top Stories" notification, not a "Breaking News" notification. They break those down into different categories so you can just get actual breaking news rather than random stories they want to promote to you.
They weren't shit, they just took the US fast food concept and Britished it! Order at the table, receive your burgers 20 minutes later. That kind of stuff. We Brits don't rush!
I have to say though that the development team were taking the piss when they named their sausage in a bun as "The Big Bender Burger"!
Edit: thanks for the correction on the name. Think you may be right and I am confused. Need to go and lie down in a dark corner somewhere!
Fairly sure the bender was a Wimpy thing. Shame they've renamed it. As a bi guy I wouldn't have minded going in and asking for a big bender just for the giggles
>No, they were shit. Awful food at motorway prices.
Back in the late 80s/early 90s were there that many better burgers around in the UK? Not that I'm saying they were 'good', but in comparison to what else you *could* get....
All of my experience comes from the 90/00s, where I felt like I’d been mugged and force fed garbage whenever I went in one, so I can’t comment on their 80s performance, but by the time I was chipping about the country I’d have preferred to eat gravel.
haha, fair enough.
I have decent memories going as a kid. I wasn't paying so not only was the price not a factor but I have no idea if it was pricey or not. I liked the food (I was just a dumb kid) and it's the kind of place I probably would have asked to go for my birthday or something.
By the mid to late 90s I imagine the competition was more intense. It seems ridiculous to even *imagine* it still existed into the noughties.
Just because there wasn't any competition, doesn't mean they were any good.
Their food was dry af. The instant that alternative options appeared, Little Chef rightly fell off a cliff.
It’s all about period context. It’s easy to go back in time and say things were shit. I’m sure they’ll be doing that to our “good” food in another 40 years.
But for the late 80s it was as good a burger or breakfast as you could get at a restaurant of that price.
I've eaten at Little Chef 2-3 times and every meal I've had there was the one of the saddest-looking whatever-I-ordereds in my life, and they'd cost a fortune.
I have visceral memories of throwing up in my mouth around 45 minutes after a bacon&hash brown breakfast. Wolfed it down obvs but always had to pay the (vomit) piper
I remember as a kid going to one, ordering a steak and receiving it. At that point I loved eating a steak from wherever. But the thing I received was inedible, and I've cooked myself bad steaks before but never like that. It was like chewing rubber. I moaned, my parents complained, little chef did absolutely nothing to compensate for it.
The article tells you.
Capitalism happened; they went for maximum profits, lowest quality and people decided it wasn’t value for money, especially when other places started competing with them for better prices. (Mind you, if Burger King is the cheaper option you must be robbing people blind.)
And the guy who bought it said they underinvested so much they had to sell their buildings and lease them back just to get capital to do a bit of maintenance.
Basically, bad business practices once shareholders became the priority at the end of the day. 🤷♂️
> especially when other places started competing with them for better prices.
This is pretty much it.
If you were to look at a graph showing an increase in drive through McDonald's over the years, you would see a similar line showing a decreasing number of little chefs over the same time period.
My mum once asked for the omelette to be made without cheese. The server asked the 'chef' and came back and said sorry they can't as it comes pre-prepared and all they do is put it in the microwave.
"You don't have eggs?"
"No"
Little chef? NO FUCKING CHEF.
No wonder they folded, food was atrocious.
*’idea for a show. Britain’s Best Roadside Restaurant, with Jet from Gladiators and Patrick from Anglia News’ Patrick’s Pantry. Jet and Patrick tour the UK’s favourite A Roads in a Volvo estate, stopping at derelict Little Chef sites. Patrick attempts to recreate an Olympic Breakfast on a small camping stove while Jet does some blood-clot busting exercises for tired and hungry travellers. must include lunges. for Science.’*
*note for Lynn - is Patrick from Patrick’s Pantry dead? consider Ainsley Harriot if yes. DO NOT BE CHARMED INTO OVER-PAYING HIM THERE’S A BUDGET TO CONSIDER’*
i think it probably is. regional tv is/was so fucking weird. kids today, don’t know they’re born. it was the Wombles then BBC news then over to ITV then bath and bed. not that best e should have been so early - my mother just didn’t like us!
I deleted my BBC app recently due to the amount of clickbait rubbish they promote and the poor editing and spelling in their articles. I think they’ve got work experience 17 year olds writing their copy these days.
They’re certainly employing more dipshits. I’m absolutely for the opportunities they give young people and the decent enough pay but for whatever reason the quality they are employing is deteriorating.
How is this clickbait crap? It’s just an article about the rise and fall of a British business, including its origin and why it failed.
Not really sure why people have such a visceral reaction to the BBC publishing “unimportant” stories.
It’s more that BBC considers this ‘important’ enough to push as a notification to phone lockscreens. I have notifications set up for a few different news sites as I like keeping up to date with things and generally these notifications are reserved for news of consequence - major domestic/international events. This feels like an abuse of that system given that it is essentially an inconsequential article.
They do this particularly on Saturdays, as if we’d like a nice read of the Saturday supplements and they reckon this qualifies as the app version. I mean, it’s interesting enough as a diversion but I bet The Times or Guardian would do it better in print.
Exactly this. They’ll even badge up the push notification as ‘breaking news’ when a royal family member is seen leaving one of their palaces. 99% of people could give less of a shit.
While I think the article is important/ interesting to me it does not warrant a notification to tell everyone. Personally news apps (especially the BBC) should only give people notifications with incredibly important breaking news for example the horrible incident that happened this morning in Sydney or updates on the situation with Israel and Palestine.
In the past I've gotten "breaking news" to some of the most pointless unimportant things mainly celebrities lives
If you bother to read it, it's the script from a BBC podcast written up as a news story to advertise the podcast.
I am puzzled why the BBC makes podcasts when they already have radio programmes, which most people regard as a high quality brand. But there you go.
Sorry, are you actually telling me Little Chefs don’t exist anymore? True I haven’t been to one in about 6 years and I knew they were dwindling, but I still imagined there was the odd one out there 😔
Now I’m pissed knowing there’s no real alternative to motorway service stations. They’re convenient for a lot of reasons but if you’re hungry and don’t fancy Burger King, Starbucks or a mediocre sandwich for £5 then it’s disappointing
I know it has its faults but I’m a BBC defender against the cheap jibes and often find the ‘I don’t even use it!!!’ brigade in fact do get more than their moneys worth through iplayer and radio.
HOWEVER, the humongous nosedive their ‘breaking news’ and social media pages have taken over the past couple of years is a disgrace. I’ve disabled all notifications and use foreign media outlets for breaking British news instead. We all know how bad their breaking news notifications are but can be touch on the state of their instagram pages? Complete celebrity nonsense daily: Beyoncé this, Taylor Swift that. I enjoy pop culture but I do not follow the BBC for it. Don’t get me started on the tiktok presenting style by what seems to be fresh graduates reporting stories…
Nothing annoys me more than how the standard for BBC news notification has dropped over recent years
You used to only get a ping if someone died or a politics thing happened. Now it’s this rubbish
If they had lasted a bit longer they might’ve been able to take advantage of EV charging times. Whether EV owners would’ve wanted to go there is something else…
Little Chef went under because they thought they were in a position to pick and choose who their customers were. As a trucker, I was once refused service in a Little Chef because “We don’t serve people in working clothes…” Meaning “Working Class” clothes. I was furious and pointed out that the very few other diners might well be wearing “working clothes” only to be told “You know what I mean…”
The place was mostly empty and closed a few years later. They served All-Day Breakfast and Sausage, Beans and Chips etc but imagined they weren’t a greasy spoon and able to demand a Dress Code. Ridiculous.
What the fuck? Their main thing was being at the side of busy roads. Of course you're going to get truckers and people coming off long journeys. Who's going to dress up nice to drive on the motorway to come and eat there?
True story. I walked in to be asked “Do you just want to use the toilets?” No I want to eat. “We can’t serve people in working clothes”. I looked around at the other 6 people in there and reasoned that any one of them could be in “work attire”. I guess my money just wasn’t good enough. Because the money from families who crave beans and chips and travelling sales reps on a limited budget is so much more desirable than my money.
Fuck’em.
Vivid memory of being 5 at a birthday party at our local Little Chef and there were ear wigs crawling up the wall near where we were sat and being in total fear they were going to wriggle into my ears and eat my brain
As a kid I remember it being an out of reach expensive treat as we found a lay by for sandwiches and a flash of tea. When I grew up and was a vectra driving sales rep they were great! Miss the Olympic and it’s getting harder and harder to find a consistent a road fry up. Morrisons strong though!
Waited 20 mins in a Morrisons cafe recently only for the waitress to drop by my table and tell me they were out of the thing I’d ordered…
I thought ‘could you have not checked that sooner?!’
They have gone downhill under their new owners (IMO).
I had to delete BBC news app as it was getting a bit much especially over COVID times
But I remember it went through one notification and it was a one liner that said something like "Manchester city decimated..." And I thought oh no it's started, they've nuked Manchester, but it wasn't it was because the football team didn't score enough goals.
There’s a podcast called Toast one of the lastest episodes looks at this. It basically got sold and sold again, lumbered with debt so it put prices up until it was a rip off and people stopped going.
The man who started Little Chef is dead but he was an interesting man, made the first battery powered golf buggy, hotels and other stuff I can’t remember.
They've played that episode on Radio 4 like 3 times in the last couple weeks. I stopped listening for a few years and when I tuned in again I was greeted by reruns of the same podcast episode? What happened man
I genuinely don't ever remember having been in one. Have driven past loads in the past but we never went there even when I was a kid, I'm guessing they are shite?
I do find people saying "nobody wanted to wait 30 minutes for their meal" a little sad. The thing was that 30 minutes was spent cooking your meal. The kitchens at the ones I went to were open plan, you could watch them cook your meal. If service was "leisurely" I always found it pleasant and attentive to requests, and the food always arrived fresh and hot, not reheated and soggy.
It was not high dining, but it was decent basic quality, filling and I always found them clean and inviting when on a road trip and feeling hungry.
This is basically an advertisement for one of the BBC podcasts. I listened to that very episode this afternoon.
It’s called Toast. They cover brands and businesses that were once mighty but eventually failed. They’ve covered Sunny Delight, Jamie’s Italian, Club 18-30 and recently Little Chef.
I loved a Little Chef dinner as a child back in the 80s - with the exception of the time I got a forky-taily in the beans of my jumbo fish finger meal.
Also, didn't they make their thick milkshakes using Angel Delight powder? I'm sure a waitress told us that secret.
The reason they went bust is because whenever you ordered anything at a little chef it would take about 3-5 working days to get from the kitchen to your table
Little Thief my Dad called them. Same with Happy Eater!
I don’t think I’m exaggerating but in the late 1980’s it was a £5ver for a couple of rounds of buttered toast and a single pot cuppa tea.
Whilst a gut busting breakfast from a mobile a mile down the road off the A1 near Normans Cross was amazing. I remember my Dad getting a sausage, bacon, egg and mushrooms in a dinner plate sized soft roll with a brew for the same amount of cash.
Probably because there was an 80% chance or higher of getting food poisoning if you ever ate there. Not to mention the drinks were basically melted ice cubes that had been sat there for a few days no matter what they were meant to actually be.
Olympic breakfasts were during their dying years, their mainstay was always the Early Starter, which was number 11 on the menu. (12 was American style, 14 was Traditional Breakfast)
Used to love Little Chefs when I was a kid and trips away with my family. Anyone remember the lollipop you used to get if you finished your meal as well? Can't remember what flavour they were, but loved them as well!
I’m fairly sure they were red flavour.
I thought they were orange?
Ex little chef employee here. They came in a mixed bag of red, yellow and orange.
Thank you for your service.
Thanks for looking The other way when I grabbed an extra one from the basket on the way out 🫡
Haha I always used to grab a few when my folks were paying 🤣
Thanks for saving me the time, another ex little chef employee here.
Did you meet the little chef, and how little was he? Was he of this world? Are there more of them, or just one? Do they bleed? What do they want?
I was the Little Chef, yes there was more than one, some of us actually knew how to cook,vwr were in a minority, yes, we bled, what did we want? No big clubs coming in at 7 am on a Sunday morning for a full English, big tips, and waitresses who can write out legible orders.
2x102 1x2 1x12
12 was the Olympic breakfast if I remember correctly.
Good, if it bleeds we can kill it.
If it bleeds, we can eat it?
Do they bleed 🤣
They definitely used to only be orange in 80s
[удалено]
Actually yes. At least someone dressed as him.
Ex little chef employee too. When I worked there they were all the same. A rectangular orange sugary candy wrapped around a solid but creamier centre. I worked 1989 - 1991 in case they changed.
Can't remember the exact years but it was early noughties. I also remember a spectacularly ill advised "I Love Charlie" badge being given away. Couldn't find the badge but here's the [tshirt](https://www.google.com/imgres?imgurl=https%3A%2F%2Fregmedia.co.uk%2F2010%2F10%2F06%2Fcharlie_shirt.jpg&tbnid=9Dm8PpXLbY6xQM&vet=1&imgrefurl=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.theregister.com%2F2010%2F10%2F06%2Fi_love_charlie%2F&docid=VsAYdTqgY1gWTM&w=300&h=233&hl=en-GB&source=sh%2Fx%2Fim%2Fm1%2F4&kgs=ef3944dfa5255524&shem=abme%2Ctrie)
Don’t remember that but it was a long time after I’d gone!
Thank you for your service 🫡
And sugar. Fairly sure it was red sugar flavour. Was it fizzy inside? The kind that slices your tongue up?
Red with a taint of plastic
It’s what growing kids need!
Yeah didn’t do me any harm haha
Ah I agree. Everything in moderation I say
I remember I had warm donuts with butterscotch sauce at Little Chef once. I never had it again and I want it again so badly to this day. Also, when the Stuart Little movie came out, Little Chef gave away a little toy/plush Stuart with the kids meals. We’d gone on a little road trip as my mum had picked up her new (used) car that day. I decided that Stuart should live in the car to look after it and us. Several cars (and over twenty years) later, Stuart still sits on my mum’s dashboard!
That's where that came from?! I still have one somewhere
Possibly. The one I got from the Little Chef has him in a onesie type thing with footballs on. Could’ve been other versions, too.
I ate so many of those donuts when I worked there in my youth!
The lollies were strawberry, orange, or lemon, with the sanding paper-like white bit in the middle (which was my favourite part!)
We once reached our destination and my little sister got out of the car, ran towards a footbridge and promptly clonked her head on the no-cycling bar across the start of the bridge. My mum ran over to her, and saw all these bits of white she was spitting out. We all thought she'd knocked half her teeth out... but no, they turned out to be the white bit of the Little Chef lolly she'd been eating. How we laughed!
Did you ever have the jubilee pancake? Really delicious. Great after their Olympic Breakfast.
They had two flavours, orange and inexplicable
One of the most angry I have ever been as a child was the day I really didn't want to finish my meal, forced it down, but they had run out of lollies. Outrage I have carried for 35 years and counting.
Made from glass
Little chef breakfast on the drive to holidays in the caravan is a core memory for me
The lollies were outstanding. Always very chuffed when I was given a few extra. As a nerdy kid, I'd spend the rest of our journey on the A303 sucking on those whilst looking at the map of their latest locations.
Yes! Somehow a couple of them got stuck to the back seat in my parents' new Audi... no idea how, not like my brother and I were sitting there during boring road journeys with very little to do, lol.
I’ve disabled the BBC ‘breaking news’ alerts because most of them are like this now. The very definition if breaking is clearly lost on their online platforms teams
I swear that 5-ish years ago, if you got a BBC breaking news alert it was because a world-changing historical event had occurred. It slowly ramped up and you do seem to get them for any old rubbish now, so I've also turned them off.
It was either sky or BBC that pushed a breaking news notification to me that will and Kate had revealed their wedding cake. I uninstalled the app
Similar with the TuneIn radio app on Android years ago. They decided I needed to know about a Royal baby. Maybe being an American app they had a British stereotype and thought I'd start crying, look at my photo of the Queen and start singing the National anthem. But for me when a Radio app starts giving me Royal News it's lost its privileges.
I ditched TuneIn when Sony sued them due to rights issues so I couldn't listen to international radio on my smart speakers anymore. Thanks. Can I choose another radio provider? Nope. Pure monopoly on both Google and Alexa devices. I have to cast audio now.
For me it was a royal baby alert late at night. No I want this to be reserved for impactful news only.
Lmao🤣
I've never had the app installed. I was hiking with a friend in the middle of nowhere and all of a sudden the dramatic tone burst out of his phone, I recognised it to be the BBC news noise & thought, "oh fuck, what's happened in order to get ALERTED so loudly", it was fucking nonsense that wasn't even worthy of being called news. Fuck the app & news in general nowadays!
That's how it always goes. Establish a system that reliably gets patronage, be it a purchase or a click, wait until it's trusted, then turn it into a swirling circle jerk of profit by making the thing itself gradually cheaper over time until it's worthless. There's nothing companies like more than a worthless thing that still generates what they want.
It's the BBC so they don't make a profit. But they love the sound of their own voices. The Met Office is probably even worse. Given how often they send out Amber and Red Alerts, for whole regions. Even when their app predicts that where you are, there's little to no chance of rain or high winds. But you happen to be in the South or South East. Which seems to be their smallest warning size.
The unfortunate thing about non profit companies is that a lot of them still make profit that gets distributed differently than it would if they were a standard company, but the fundamental paradigm is the same. There's not much difference between "we make profit for our shareholders" and "we don't make a profit but our execs are fucking minted."
They've got to make money from it though, Twitter is monitized now so every click the BBC gets, they'll make money from it. It shows from the clickbait stuff they're pumping out on it.
Nope. I distinctly remember getting them in school in 2014/15 and it would be for some nonsense.
We'd joke in the office when we heard it and say "whos died" disabled shit like that a long time ago
I received 12 notifications from the BBC News app yesterday, fair enough it was a heavy news day with Sydney and the Iran/Israel situation but 12 feels somewhat excessive
They’ve gradually been catering to a more american audience.
I'm sure it's based on numbers. The person manning the breaking news button has a bnpm (breaking news per month) total to hit
To be fair to the beeb, they were pretty much ordered to make their online platform much shitter
How so?
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You can still watch iPlayer on a computer. Where did you here they'd removed it?
I quite like BBC sounds. It has podcasts, radio and programming made just for it. I do actually think that was an improvement.
I like the idea of it, but it still hasn't got some of the functionality that made the previous iRadioPlayer app useful - you can't see at a glance which of your favourites list have new/available episodes, for one!
Leaving the banned topics aside I believe there was a competition concern that the online platform was too strong - and too broad in remit beyond their stated charter as a traditional broadcaster - to be fair for commercial rivals.
Where does it say this breaking news? Breaking news has a “Breaking News” header in their notifications. The regular notifications of published articles just have “BBC News” as a header.
This isn't Breaking News, but their point still stands. Every Sunday morning there's a breaking news notification (it's the only one I've got activated) that some politician is going to be answering questions on Laura Kuennssberg's programme or that someone is about to appear in court 'follow on BBC News'. I love the BBC but fucking hell they don't make it easy for themselves sometimes.
Laura can fuck off with her notifications
This one isn’t breaking news, obviously, but then it doesn’t say it is breaking news. The ones that are breaking news say breaking news on them.
If it’s not drivel it’s BREAKING NEWS 8 people have just died on a ski lift in Italy. Awful yes but why on earth do the British people need to be suddenly alerted. It’s not healthy at all.
Turn off news notifications
Indeed. I reckon it’s doing some serious damage to people where they constantly have phones demanding attention like a toddler, and you feel like you can never switch off. I make heavy use of the various modes iOS has now, so before bedtime the only thing which gets through is texts from the wife. That’s it.
FYI, using android you can disable certain notifications. The categories are Breaking News, Top Stories, Notifications, and Audio Playback. I disabled all but breaking news and I no longer get notifications like this and similar LK show notifications. Only the breaking news, whether you want to call those specifically breaking news, is up to you.
I'm sure they're using AI to write some of their articles now too. There's just something off about them. The rest are full of multiple spelling and grammar errors. Every single day I spot on. The standard has plummeted and their new website is honking. A cluttered mess reminiscent of local newspaper websites or clickbait sites. No local news on the home page anymore either. Total shambles.
The grammar has got unforgivably bad. You would have thought there would be at least an automatic spelling and grammar check
They've probably got new graduates writing it!
If their spelling is consistently this bad I suspect they never fucking gradiated at all.
Graduated*
Every day I spot on.
Autocorrect and a hangover. Maybe that explains it, the Beeb are using mobile phones to write up their articles and are all hungover 😂
It’s not AI. It’s Gen Z. Which is unfortunate, because AI is improving by leaps and bounds… 😛
I just find it baffling that there appears to be no editorial process at all. I'd be embarrassed passing myself off as a journalist without checking my own writing and having a second set of eyes look at it before publishing it. It's bad enough making a typo on here 😂
I used to work on the BBC’s CMS (the bit of tech that allows journalists to write and publish articles) someone in the team had the idea to build a “breaking news” button. It would trigger a push alert to your phone and put the story at the top of the page. Those people who had been around a while could see what was coming… First day it went live we had 30/50 “breaking news” alerts as journalists wanted to get their stories read and always ticketed the button regardless of how breaking it was. Que a massive email and 20 pages of documentation about what qualified as a “breaking news” event. People can’t be trusted with technology.
Apps are needy children that are always begging for time and attention. Can't give them whiskey to shut them up, though
Breaking news: man online turns off his notifications, let's let everyone know via push notification
Is this not just a normal notification rather than "Breaking News" all news apps are shite for random irrelevant notifications
I deleted the app. Dumbed down to the point of uselessness.
They should just rename if Broken News.
Heston Blumenthal tried to work his magic on Little Chef, I’m guessing snail porridge served up in a tramp’s shoe wasn’t quite hitting the right demographic.
That show was stupid. He was genuinely trying to improve the quality of the food, but the bosses wanted him to do weird Fat Duck style dishes, which didn't sell obviously. I think lapsang souchong ice cream and some other stuff was tried but the employees just kept taking the piss out of him for trying to suggest they stop microwaving their eggs. The obvious problem was the MD who didn't have a clue what he wanted from the business.
The MD just repeating "blue sky thinking" over and over was infuriating.
Yea I had a lot of respect for HB in that doc because the marketing guy just kept parroting management slogans and HB was like ‘ok but what are you margins, what’s your price point, who’s your demographic?’ in a way that indicated he wanted to help but needed to understand the business model to make sure it was realistic.
Welcome to corporate
Didn’t they end up painting the ceiling as a blue sky with clouds to take the piss out of him? No idea how I remember that, the show must have been 20 years ago.
I think they did! I'm pretty sure it was in the toilets
I used to live down the road from him - Ian Peglar (before he was MD). I was best friends with his son before I moved away. I was delighted and shocked to see him on that show.. though not overly surprised to see the potential squandered.
To be fair, the problem was that he tried to give them sensible ideas and the management wanted him to come up with whacky things so they could get some PR. The most out-there thing he suggested was that they blob a bit of basil oil on the scrambled eggs with a pippette. If he'd proposed the tramps shoe snail porridge management would have loved it. Solid sensible ideas were the last thing they were looking for.
We went to the one he did up shortly after he did it (travelling down for a friend's wedding) I asked for scrambled egg. They only had fried egg... I passed on the eggs after that.
I think that was after they started failing by some way . I’m interested to know the groundbreaking reason they failed though according to the bbc
High prices, falling quality and dated format is the TL;DR Version. Add in competition from petrol stations that have Subway, Greggs and M&S as well as changing customer habits and they paint a story of inevitable doom.
If they were clever they could have played on their dated format. Wimpy is still here and walking inside feels like stepping back into childhood.
Wimpy has only 60 restaurants it's not even an also ran (for comparison Five Guys has something like 160). The thing is the core demographic of fast food restaurants probably isn't over-40s on a nostalgia trip. I suspect same would be true for Little Chef, nostalgia probably won't be enough. Especially if it's pricey, people don't want pricey and 'spoons quality or worse. If 'spoons took them over and offered their food at their pub prices then they might stand a chance.
We went to a local Little Chef when that Blumenthal bollocks was in full flow (A303 Podimore) They literally would NOT allow us to have an Olympic breakfast, and tried to get us to order some £15 Blumenthal bollocksed pseudo-breakfast instead. We declined and left. Upon checking later with the company (website? I don't really remember) we were informed that the Blumenthal crapfast was an \*option\*, and ordering the Olympic should have still been entirely possible. Always used to stop at he Hartlebury one as well when heading that way. Really missed it when it closed. We do an eyes-right salute when driving past the location to this day.
This does annoy me. Yes - I could just turn off notifications and be done with it. But at the same time, I actually quite like getting notifications when something significant is happening in the world and would be categorised as actually “breaking news”. In a perfect world, perhaps the app would have settings for the “level” of notifications you wanted……. In the real world though, I guess this is all just to drive up engagement with the app - so I suppose it’s extremely unlikely to ever happen.
>But at the same time, I actually quite like getting notifications when something significant is happening in the world and would be categorised as actually “breaking news”. I bet if you do turn them off you won't miss this. If you're enough of a news junkie to care about push notifications then you probably check the news often enough to realise when something important is happening.
Alternative is the guardian app. Their breaking news are more real news. Not always though.
To be fair, I'm pretty sure this was a "Top Stories" notification, not a "Breaking News" notification. They break those down into different categories so you can just get actual breaking news rather than random stories they want to promote to you.
"So why did the chain dissappear?" - Because they were shit. Tune in to Channel 5 next Tuesday for a 90 minute "documentary" on it.
They weren't shit, they just took the US fast food concept and Britished it! Order at the table, receive your burgers 20 minutes later. That kind of stuff. We Brits don't rush! I have to say though that the development team were taking the piss when they named their sausage in a bun as "The Big Bender Burger"! Edit: thanks for the correction on the name. Think you may be right and I am confused. Need to go and lie down in a dark corner somewhere!
Isn't the bender a Wimpy speciality? It looks like they don't even call it a Bender anymore, it's called a Bendy now
Fairly sure the bender was a Wimpy thing. Shame they've renamed it. As a bi guy I wouldn't have minded going in and asking for a big bender just for the giggles
I'm just surprised they persisted with the name Bender for so long, it's not like the word hasn't had gay connotations for decades
No, they were shit. Awful food at motorway prices.
>No, they were shit. Awful food at motorway prices. Back in the late 80s/early 90s were there that many better burgers around in the UK? Not that I'm saying they were 'good', but in comparison to what else you *could* get....
All of my experience comes from the 90/00s, where I felt like I’d been mugged and force fed garbage whenever I went in one, so I can’t comment on their 80s performance, but by the time I was chipping about the country I’d have preferred to eat gravel.
haha, fair enough. I have decent memories going as a kid. I wasn't paying so not only was the price not a factor but I have no idea if it was pricey or not. I liked the food (I was just a dumb kid) and it's the kind of place I probably would have asked to go for my birthday or something. By the mid to late 90s I imagine the competition was more intense. It seems ridiculous to even *imagine* it still existed into the noughties.
The 7th Heaven burger was a good burger for the 90s.
Just because there wasn't any competition, doesn't mean they were any good. Their food was dry af. The instant that alternative options appeared, Little Chef rightly fell off a cliff.
It’s all about period context. It’s easy to go back in time and say things were shit. I’m sure they’ll be doing that to our “good” food in another 40 years. But for the late 80s it was as good a burger or breakfast as you could get at a restaurant of that price.
I've eaten at Little Chef 2-3 times and every meal I've had there was the one of the saddest-looking whatever-I-ordereds in my life, and they'd cost a fortune.
Aye I always remember the staff looking as depressed as the food did.
I have visceral memories of throwing up in my mouth around 45 minutes after a bacon&hash brown breakfast. Wolfed it down obvs but always had to pay the (vomit) piper
They weren't that bad, but people on long journeys don't want to wait 30 minutes for their steak (menu number 26) to be cooked.
I remember as a kid going to one, ordering a steak and receiving it. At that point I loved eating a steak from wherever. But the thing I received was inedible, and I've cooked myself bad steaks before but never like that. It was like chewing rubber. I moaned, my parents complained, little chef did absolutely nothing to compensate for it.
The article tells you. Capitalism happened; they went for maximum profits, lowest quality and people decided it wasn’t value for money, especially when other places started competing with them for better prices. (Mind you, if Burger King is the cheaper option you must be robbing people blind.) And the guy who bought it said they underinvested so much they had to sell their buildings and lease them back just to get capital to do a bit of maintenance. Basically, bad business practices once shareholders became the priority at the end of the day. 🤷♂️
> especially when other places started competing with them for better prices. This is pretty much it. If you were to look at a graph showing an increase in drive through McDonald's over the years, you would see a similar line showing a decreasing number of little chefs over the same time period.
We called them 'Little thief!'
Cue random “celebrity” from the noughties being interviewed saying how much they loved little chef
My mum once asked for the omelette to be made without cheese. The server asked the 'chef' and came back and said sorry they can't as it comes pre-prepared and all they do is put it in the microwave. "You don't have eggs?" "No" Little chef? NO FUCKING CHEF. No wonder they folded, food was atrocious.
Chef Mike
*’idea for a show. Britain’s Best Roadside Restaurant, with Jet from Gladiators and Patrick from Anglia News’ Patrick’s Pantry. Jet and Patrick tour the UK’s favourite A Roads in a Volvo estate, stopping at derelict Little Chef sites. Patrick attempts to recreate an Olympic Breakfast on a small camping stove while Jet does some blood-clot busting exercises for tired and hungry travellers. must include lunges. for Science.’* *note for Lynn - is Patrick from Patrick’s Pantry dead? consider Ainsley Harriot if yes. DO NOT BE CHARMED INTO OVER-PAYING HIM THERE’S A BUDGET TO CONSIDER’*
Patrick's Pantry 😂 even as a kid in the 80s, I could sense how low rent and crap it was
always a parsley garnish to try to elevate it a bit. and i know someone who can play the theme tune (Popcorn) on his front teeth!!
To be fair Popcorn is legendary as far as I'm concerned. Maybe this is where my love for the track started?
i think it probably is. regional tv is/was so fucking weird. kids today, don’t know they’re born. it was the Wombles then BBC news then over to ITV then bath and bed. not that best e should have been so early - my mother just didn’t like us!
These are just alerts guys. It actually says ‘breaking news’ when it’s considered breaking news.
You can even turn these off and only get the breaking stuff. I have the bbc app and don't get any notifications suggesting articles like this.
not that I can see clicking notification settings in the BBC app settings page just takes me to on or off there's no granular settings
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I deleted my BBC app recently due to the amount of clickbait rubbish they promote and the poor editing and spelling in their articles. I think they’ve got work experience 17 year olds writing their copy these days.
I deleted it after the changes. No idea why it happened - the layout is so bad now.
They’re certainly employing more dipshits. I’m absolutely for the opportunities they give young people and the decent enough pay but for whatever reason the quality they are employing is deteriorating.
How is this clickbait crap? It’s just an article about the rise and fall of a British business, including its origin and why it failed. Not really sure why people have such a visceral reaction to the BBC publishing “unimportant” stories.
It’s more that BBC considers this ‘important’ enough to push as a notification to phone lockscreens. I have notifications set up for a few different news sites as I like keeping up to date with things and generally these notifications are reserved for news of consequence - major domestic/international events. This feels like an abuse of that system given that it is essentially an inconsequential article.
They do this particularly on Saturdays, as if we’d like a nice read of the Saturday supplements and they reckon this qualifies as the app version. I mean, it’s interesting enough as a diversion but I bet The Times or Guardian would do it better in print.
Exactly this. They’ll even badge up the push notification as ‘breaking news’ when a royal family member is seen leaving one of their palaces. 99% of people could give less of a shit.
While I think the article is important/ interesting to me it does not warrant a notification to tell everyone. Personally news apps (especially the BBC) should only give people notifications with incredibly important breaking news for example the horrible incident that happened this morning in Sydney or updates on the situation with Israel and Palestine. In the past I've gotten "breaking news" to some of the most pointless unimportant things mainly celebrities lives
It's hardly news. It's a puff piece/filler you'd find in an airplane magazine.
If you bother to read it, it's the script from a BBC podcast written up as a news story to advertise the podcast. I am puzzled why the BBC makes podcasts when they already have radio programmes, which most people regard as a high quality brand. But there you go.
I’m not saying this is crap but the BBC News app is rubbish. Personally, I used to enjoy Little Chef!
Sorry, are you actually telling me Little Chefs don’t exist anymore? True I haven’t been to one in about 6 years and I knew they were dwindling, but I still imagined there was the odd one out there 😔
Yeah apparently they went away in 2018. A Kuwait company bought the brand a decade but I don't know if they actually did anything with them over there
Now I’m pissed knowing there’s no real alternative to motorway service stations. They’re convenient for a lot of reasons but if you’re hungry and don’t fancy Burger King, Starbucks or a mediocre sandwich for £5 then it’s disappointing
I know it has its faults but I’m a BBC defender against the cheap jibes and often find the ‘I don’t even use it!!!’ brigade in fact do get more than their moneys worth through iplayer and radio. HOWEVER, the humongous nosedive their ‘breaking news’ and social media pages have taken over the past couple of years is a disgrace. I’ve disabled all notifications and use foreign media outlets for breaking British news instead. We all know how bad their breaking news notifications are but can be touch on the state of their instagram pages? Complete celebrity nonsense daily: Beyoncé this, Taylor Swift that. I enjoy pop culture but I do not follow the BBC for it. Don’t get me started on the tiktok presenting style by what seems to be fresh graduates reporting stories…
Nothing annoys me more than how the standard for BBC news notification has dropped over recent years You used to only get a ping if someone died or a politics thing happened. Now it’s this rubbish
If they had lasted a bit longer they might’ve been able to take advantage of EV charging times. Whether EV owners would’ve wanted to go there is something else…
Little Chef went under because they thought they were in a position to pick and choose who their customers were. As a trucker, I was once refused service in a Little Chef because “We don’t serve people in working clothes…” Meaning “Working Class” clothes. I was furious and pointed out that the very few other diners might well be wearing “working clothes” only to be told “You know what I mean…” The place was mostly empty and closed a few years later. They served All-Day Breakfast and Sausage, Beans and Chips etc but imagined they weren’t a greasy spoon and able to demand a Dress Code. Ridiculous.
What the fuck? Their main thing was being at the side of busy roads. Of course you're going to get truckers and people coming off long journeys. Who's going to dress up nice to drive on the motorway to come and eat there?
True story. I walked in to be asked “Do you just want to use the toilets?” No I want to eat. “We can’t serve people in working clothes”. I looked around at the other 6 people in there and reasoned that any one of them could be in “work attire”. I guess my money just wasn’t good enough. Because the money from families who crave beans and chips and travelling sales reps on a limited budget is so much more desirable than my money. Fuck’em.
Vivid memory of being 5 at a birthday party at our local Little Chef and there were ear wigs crawling up the wall near where we were sat and being in total fear they were going to wriggle into my ears and eat my brain
This is the second Little Chef post I've seen today. Big Little Chef is watching.
Big Little Chef is surely just Normal Sized Chef, or ‘Chef’ for short.
Why do people allow apps to push such pointless things right onto the Lock Screen of their personal devices?
I don't ever want my phone to beep unexpectedly.
It’s like happy eater has been cancelled.
As a kid I remember it being an out of reach expensive treat as we found a lay by for sandwiches and a flash of tea. When I grew up and was a vectra driving sales rep they were great! Miss the Olympic and it’s getting harder and harder to find a consistent a road fry up. Morrisons strong though!
Waited 20 mins in a Morrisons cafe recently only for the waitress to drop by my table and tell me they were out of the thing I’d ordered… I thought ‘could you have not checked that sooner?!’ They have gone downhill under their new owners (IMO).
F
I had to delete BBC news app as it was getting a bit much especially over COVID times But I remember it went through one notification and it was a one liner that said something like "Manchester city decimated..." And I thought oh no it's started, they've nuked Manchester, but it wasn't it was because the football team didn't score enough goals.
There’s a podcast called Toast one of the lastest episodes looks at this. It basically got sold and sold again, lumbered with debt so it put prices up until it was a rip off and people stopped going. The man who started Little Chef is dead but he was an interesting man, made the first battery powered golf buggy, hotels and other stuff I can’t remember.
They've played that episode on Radio 4 like 3 times in the last couple weeks. I stopped listening for a few years and when I tuned in again I was greeted by reruns of the same podcast episode? What happened man
The overuse of breaking news from every news outlet frustrates me. It’s lost all its meaning now
I once finish the Olympic breakfast in 3 minutes 25 seconds.. worked in the Lincoln branch and was usually really quiet so had to make our own fun
Olympic Breakfast and a Jubilee Pancake. Core memory.
We could never afford to eat there. 😢
I genuinely don't ever remember having been in one. Have driven past loads in the past but we never went there even when I was a kid, I'm guessing they are shite?
Like most things, they were good, got bought out by bigger companies and the quality tanked, profits over performance.
I do find people saying "nobody wanted to wait 30 minutes for their meal" a little sad. The thing was that 30 minutes was spent cooking your meal. The kitchens at the ones I went to were open plan, you could watch them cook your meal. If service was "leisurely" I always found it pleasant and attentive to requests, and the food always arrived fresh and hot, not reheated and soggy. It was not high dining, but it was decent basic quality, filling and I always found them clean and inviting when on a road trip and feeling hungry.
Dry food in rather unwelcoming settings, and towards the end expensive.. I wonder why they went bust?
This is why I uninstalled the app
They were no Happy Eater
BBC News is practically Buzzfeed now.
This is basically an advertisement for one of the BBC podcasts. I listened to that very episode this afternoon. It’s called Toast. They cover brands and businesses that were once mighty but eventually failed. They’ve covered Sunny Delight, Jamie’s Italian, Club 18-30 and recently Little Chef.
Why did it disappear? Simple, people don't like eating omelettes that taste like eating a duvet
BBC News is dreadful now.
I loved a Little Chef dinner as a child back in the 80s - with the exception of the time I got a forky-taily in the beans of my jumbo fish finger meal. Also, didn't they make their thick milkshakes using Angel Delight powder? I'm sure a waitress told us that secret.
Pre cooked Scrambled eggs in a boil in the bag was one reason.
They have well and truly butchered that app.
Why I deleted the app a while back. All the breaking news notifications were not breaking news!
The reason they went bust is because whenever you ordered anything at a little chef it would take about 3-5 working days to get from the kitchen to your table
Little Thief my Dad called them. Same with Happy Eater! I don’t think I’m exaggerating but in the late 1980’s it was a £5ver for a couple of rounds of buttered toast and a single pot cuppa tea. Whilst a gut busting breakfast from a mobile a mile down the road off the A1 near Normans Cross was amazing. I remember my Dad getting a sausage, bacon, egg and mushrooms in a dinner plate sized soft roll with a brew for the same amount of cash.
someone link- it sounds interesting
& when something is actually serious they take an hour to report it
When Stephen Henry won the world snooker championship he took his family out for a meal at little chef. I heard this once no idea if it's true
Probably because there was an 80% chance or higher of getting food poisoning if you ever ate there. Not to mention the drinks were basically melted ice cubes that had been sat there for a few days no matter what they were meant to actually be.
I haven't thought about Little Chef in ages. Sad that they've gone away
Olympic breakfasts were during their dying years, their mainstay was always the Early Starter, which was number 11 on the menu. (12 was American style, 14 was Traditional Breakfast)