The owner of Little Chef, TLLC Group Holdings (TLLC), has announced it will be putting the roadside restaurant chain up for sale in next spring.

TLLC, which also owns the low-cost Travelodge hotel group, decided to sell the majority of its Little Chef outlets in the UK following a strategic review of both businesses.

Of the 297 sites and 40 franchised outlets at Moto motorway service stations in the UK, Travelodge will retain the 115 restaurants it shares a site with. The remainder will be sold as a going concern in a sale that could reach an estimated total of between £30m-£50m.

TLLC then intends to pursue a more aggressive expansion of the Travelodge chain, which currently has 250 hotels.

It has recently announced plans to open a new Travelodge hotel every 10 days over the next three years, which could see Travelodge’s portfolio swell to 400 hotels with 7,500 additional rooms by 2007.

Chief executive of TLLC, Grant Hearn, said: “As the group’s focus is our core low cost hotels business, it makes strategic sense for us to devote our full financial and management resources to this objective.

“Realising the value of our roadside restaurant chain will provide a further injection of capital into Travelodge’s organic growth programme.”

Earlier this year, Little Chef chief executive Tim Scoble said he would lead a management buyout of the roadside chain if its owner decided to walk away from the group before he had finished transforming it.

Blaming underinvestment and over-pricing by its previous owners, Granada and Compass, for Little Chef’s deterioration, Scoble had already begun to rebuild the chain by restructuring its management and trialing new ideas through development sites.

However, a spokesperson for Little Chef today confirmed that a management buyout was no longer an option and the part-sale, part-retention of the restaurant chain was the best option for all concerned. Details: www.travelodge.co.uk