On top of the regular flow of customers, motorway accidents would send streams of cars piling in: coaches full of school trips, families desperate to get home. A service station is not the type of place you’d expect to have regulars, but there were plenty at our Little Chef. The toast lady who came in at 10am every day and wanted two slices of brown toast, no butter. And the handsome coffee man who came in at 11am every weekday, occasionally on Sundays. He looked a little like Kevin Spacey. There was also the guy who would come in late at night, order half a bottle of wine with his dinner and spend ages filling out the Daily Mail crossword, but mostly he was perving on the staff. And he never left a tip. A transvestite would frequent about once a month. One time a young businessman left me his number on a napkin.
Lorry drivers were the best customers. They became our Little Chef family. They’d hang out on table 24 in the smoking section and were always the last to leave. Northern Nigel would buy us chocolates. He was a charmer.
—Laura Bradley writing in the English food journal The Gourmand about working at the British roadside restaurant chain Little Chef
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