Little Chef 'set for £55m bid'
A restaurant entrepreneur was today reported to be lining up a bid of up to £55m (€80.2m) for more than 100 Little Chef roadside diners.
Lawrence Wosskow, who founded Out of Town restaurants, is said to be in exclusive talks with Little Chef’s private equity owner Permira.
The report in the Financial Times added the sale of 118 sites – worth between £53m (€77m) and £55m (€80.2m) – could be announced within the next fortnight.
Permira will keep hold of around 115 Little Chef outlets next to Travelodge hotels, which it bought along with the Little Chef chain in a deal with catering company Compass worth £712m (€1bn) in 2003.
Mr Wosskow is well known in the restaurant industry after setting up Out of Town, which runs sites in shopping centres and leisure parks, in 1998.
The Sheffield-based millionaire left the business in 2002, when it had operations in 19 centres and generated turnover of around £26m (€37.9m). It was acquired in a management buy-in, backed by Penta Capital.
The popularity of the Little Chef brand was underlined last year when plans to commission a slimmed down version of the company’s chef logo – dating back 32 years – caused an uproar.
The chain, which serves 20 million customers a year, started life as an 11-seat outlet in Reading, Berkshire, in 1958, and has sites across the UK and Ireland.
Today’s report said Mr Wosskow was thought to be keen to maintain the sites as restaurants, even though the percentage of freehold sites increased speculation that some outlets could be converted to other uses.
