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Welcome Break

Welcome Break
Welcome Break
Locations:27
Introduced:1970s
Predecessors:Trusthouse Forte, Ross
Acquired by:Appia Investments
Chief executive:Rod McKie
Headquarters address:2 Vantage Court, Tickford Street, Newport Pagnell, Buckinghamshire, MK16 9EZ [map]
Phone number:01908 299700
Website:
www.welcomebreak.co.uk
Facebook Page

Main Page | Photo Gallery | Map

Having recently introduced several new brands to the motorway Welcome Break are currently in a strong position, with their first new service area for several years opening soon at Peartree - a site they had previously lost. They are the second largest operator, behind Moto.

Contents

Company History

Welcome Break were originally created in the 1970s by Imperial Tobacco, as a sister company to Happy Eater, owning 10 restaurants on A-roads in the south. By 1979 these had all either closed or become Happy Eaters.

A few years later, Hanson Trust acquired four "highly respected" services from Ross, which they re-branded as Welcome Break, bringing the company back to life as a motorway brand. They were soon bought by Trusthouse Forte in 1986 who decided that Welcome Break is so popular that they would be better off re-branding all of Forte's services as Welcome Break, rather than doing it the traditional way round. Forte also bought Happy Eater at the same time, and introduced three Happy Eaters to Welcome Break services.

In 1995 Forte announced that they were going to add a McDonalds to every one of their services, but the process was stopped after just two because Forte were acquired by Granada, a deal which included Welcome Break. Granada described Welcome Break's original concept as "still looking good", but that they "have not been kept up to date". Granada then said that they wanted to add Burger King and Little Chef to all the services and make use of the Travelodge chain which they had also acquired as part of the deal, and that in doing this they wanted to make a much-doubted £500m from the deal.

Just months after buying them, Granada upped the prices at all of their services given that they now owned over 75% of the motorway market, for example the M4 is 189 miles long and yet the only services which weren't owned by Granada were at the very end. It's not surprising that they did make their £500m.

By now, Granada had grown so much they were investigated by the Monopolies and Mergers Commission, who put a cap on the prices at their services and insisted that they sold Welcome Break. Eventually it was bought by Investcorp for £476million, but the whole event took almost 2 years - a time which angered many people, especially RoadChef. Welcome Break didn't get all their services back, many smaller a-road services like Sutton Scotney on the A34 were kept by Granada, but they shrunk it down and sold it off a few years later.

A Coffee Primo lounge

During the shake-up, Granada had fixed franchises for Little Chef and Travelodge for all their services, so after the split Welcome Break had to replace them with their own-branded Red Hen and Welcome Lodge respectively, although these have now been phased out themselves. For a while former Red Hen units were left unused, before becoming coffee lounges for Coffee Primo and now Starbucks.

After making a profit for the first time in a while, Investcorp put Welcome Break up for sale in 2008 with a price of around £500million. They were bought by Appia Investments, although the exact price is not known.

Welcome Break Today

Welcome Break own a lot of the older sites, like Charnock Richard and the second-oldest in the country, Newport Pagnell. This contrasts with several late 1990s services they own, such as Oxford and Hopwood Park, both of which have been praised for their architecture.

Following a series of successful trials, Welcome Break recently introduced Waitrose, Starbucks and WH Smith to many of their services, replacing their own shop and Coffee Primo. This goes with KFC and Days Inn which they have also recently rolled out. With these new brands they hope to attract a wider range of customers. They have talked about branching into another sector all together, with the opening of services at Cardiff Gate and more recently Peartree, both of which aim for local traffic as much as long-distance traffic. They also took over the catering at the Eurotunnel UK Terminal, and later agreed to take on the freight terminal as well.


Keele, both in orange and with an advert for oxygen.

The new brands and changes in direction go hand-in-hand with the several stages of refurbishment which has been carried out at all of their services, trying to freshen up some of the older ones and introduce more modern facilities. As part of this, they briefly painted many of their services orange (to match Coffee Primo) and red (for KFC), but instead settled on black to go with their new colour scheme which was introduced in 2006. In 2007 they applied to display 'supergraphic' advertisements stretched across the internal walkways at all of their services. They were all refused on road safety grounds.

All of their services now have truckwash facilities and they have also refurbished a Routemaster bus which travel around with coffee facilities.

Welcome Break did very well in the Loo of the Year Awards, which until then had been dominated by Moto. In 2008, out of 36 graded services, 30 of them won five stars and the remaining six all four stars. Overall, out of all the country's public toilets graded, Welcome Break's facilities came eighth, beaten by the likes of McDonalds and ASDA. They were awarded a 'Standards of Excellence' (Champions League) award.

The Times listed Welcome Break as being the 81st biggest private company in 2008 (dropping 22 places since the year before), with annual sales of £631m and profits of £37m.

In 2009, Welcome Break launched 'Welcome Break Radio' to rival Moto's special stream of Virgin Radio and their predecessor's 'Granada Radio'.

They keep staff updated on their latest goings-on through social media and a monthly magazine both under the name 'Stan Break'.

Logo History

The original logo

Until 2006 Welcome Break used the almost iconic image of a bird (which was often described as being dead) as its logo. This image was redesigned in the late '90s, with the original one being pictured to the right. (The slightly improved one between 2000 and 2006 can be seen in the photo gallery).

All their services now use a mural which resembles its location, with the words 'Welcome Break' in white and green-on-black. Welcome Break have also teamed up with KFC to appear on their road signs, but they've previously used Sainsbury's, Burger King and Coffee Primo. As part of the trend of pushing brand names further than their own, some services are now signed as being 'Waitrose KFC'.

Facilities

Welcome Break's facilities include:

General: Picnic Tables, Local Information, Meeting Rooms, BT Openzone, Alpine Cleaning Services, Traffic Information, Welcome Break Gaming, Showers
Restaurants: KFC, McDonalds, Burger King, Eat In, Coffee Primo, Starbucks
Shops: WH Smith, Fonebitz, Waitrose
Fuel: Shell, BP
Motel: Days Inn

Welcome Break Services

The following sites are run by Welcome Break:
[view on a map]

Smaller Services

Extra Motels

They also lease out the motels at the following services and brand them as Days Inn:

Former Services

The following services were owned by Welcome Break:

1970s A-road Sites

The following a-road sites were ran by Welcome Break in the 1970s:

Unbuilt Services

The following services were planned by Welcome Break but they were never built:

Comments and Reviews

Showing the most recent responses only: for the full thread and the ability to edit your own posts, you need to view the topic in the forums.
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Author: Message:

Anonymous

Welcome Break Gordano allow Parking Eye to 'police' parking at the service area and to levy fines.

Parking Eye issue no receipt for parking charges over two hours and charge a penalty for any overstay that they claim has occured. The penalty is exhorbitant and since no receipt is ever issued cannot be challenged.

That Welcome Break support such a corrupt practice is very much regretted and, if customer relations are valued is a matter that they need to remedy as a matter of urgency.


PostPosted: 18 Aug 2010, 09:14

MatthewB6323

Changes continue at Welcome Break, and not just the publicized ones. As expected, on calling at Welcome Break Warwick northbound, I found Coffee Primo boarded up, with Starbucks adverts and logos on the hoardings; work to strip out the remaining Coffee Primo fittings could be seen through the windows. Starbucks is of course already at Warwick southbound.

Meanwhile the Coffee Primo brand was being phased out at Eat In, with coffee mugs carefully stacked so the Coffee Primo insignia faced the wall...

...but most surprisingly Eat In's sandwich range was restricted to baguettes, rolls and paninis, with sandwiches proper replaced by Waitrose sandwiches. No more vegetarian triples for me, it seems.

With The Sunday Times reporting this week that Waitrose are negotiating to buy sandwich chain Eat, perhaps they will supplant Welcome Break's very similar house brand?


PostPosted: 31 Mar 2010, 21:12

Alan

As someone who has grown up with Granada, I have always been very loyal to them and, with the rebrand, then loyal to Moto. However, I feel Moto are becoming a bit too pre-occupied with turning their services into copies of airport/ railway station/ shopping centre facilites. This often seems to be at the expense of the traditional self service restaurant, which is often left shoehorned into a small, dark untidy space and often looks very scaled down, clumsy and seems to suffer from under investment whencompared with the high street brands.As a result many Motos seem cramped, dark, poorly laid out and devoid of character. I can applaud them for M&S but it is ionly part of the story.

Welcome Break by contrast seem to understand that a motorway customer is different from a shopper/ flyer and that indeed an MSA needs to be different.
Yes they have KFC, Burger King and WH Smith but this is balanced with their own Home-grown Costa rival and a proper self-service restaurant format that looks good, is well stocked, well laid out, tken seriously by the management and works - just like Granada's Fresh Express used to! In addition they give their services a bit of character, branding each one individually with relevant images and pictures to the area it is in. For me this has Moto beaten!


PostPosted: 11 Aug 2009, 21:27

Anonymous

welcome break are trialing waitrose stores http://www.ft.com/cms/s/0/ba9acb3c-1f1c ... ck_check=1


PostPosted: 02 Apr 2009, 22:28

Admin

Post your comments and reviews for Welcome Break here, or you can return to Welcome Break.


PostPosted: 05 Nov 2005, 10:29
Showing the most recent responses only: for the full thread and the ability to edit your own posts, you need to view the topic in the forums.View the thread Post your comment

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With thanks to Alan Simpson and the users 'Ziathon', 'webtat' and 'Roadhog_001' for the information used on this page.


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