£10m sell-off on the table for Little Chef
Roadside restaurant chain set to announce that it has hammered out an eleventh-hour rescue package with two investors
Struggling roadside restaurant chain
Little Chef could be
sold for about £10m, leaving 4,000 jobs in the balance.
Yesterday it was rumoured that the firm was in takeover talks with Israeli
property
group Arazim, and
turnaround
specialist RCapital. It
emerged the chain could be bought as part of a rescue deal, possibly leading
to an initial closure of 40 of its 234 outlets.
Little Chef is one of Britain’s best-known brands and employs almost 4,000
people at 234 outlets, but is said to be losing up to £3m each year. Recent
reports have stated that its parent company, the People’s Restaurant Group (PRG)
was on the brink of administration.
PRG suffered problems after a £60.3m sale and leaseback deal of 65 sites in
February with Arazim. Trading picked up after the transaction, but not as
quickly as PRG had expected.
Further reading:
KPMG cooking up refinancing plan for Little
Chef
Light appears at end of Eurotunnel’s debt
nightmare
Half empty: the effect of bad debt