Bunhill: New: a pit stop that isn't the pits

PUT IT to Tim Ingram Hill that he is a flagrant monopolist, and he goes all defensive. Next week, the chairman of Road Chef opens the Clacket Lane service station on the M25, the only pit stop on the 184-mile journey from the Channel ports via the M40 to Birmingham.

For cars with small tanks and motorists with small bladders, it should be irresistible. The 100 toilet cubicles are outnumbered only by the 160 petrol pumps. Ingram Hill says it will be the biggest service area in Europe.

Sited near Tandridge on the Surrey/Kent border, Clacket Lane is a complex of restaurants, fast-food outlets and shops. There's also an amusement arcade and a tourist information office. It cost pounds 35m and expects to serve 5,000 customers a day.

But service areas are not necessarily a pot of gold, says Ingram Hill. The Department of Transport insists on 24-hour opening 365 days a year; there are restrictions on what can be sold - so people don't congest the motorways just to do their shopping; and then there's that pricey porcelain. 'It cost me almost as much to build the toilets as the catering block,' he says.

Petrol is 9-16p a gallon more than supermarket prices, he concedes, but that is because he cannot buy in such bulk. 'Sometimes we'd do well to take a tanker down to Sainsbury's and fill up there.'

And no longer are operators guaranteed a captive market. To the irritation of Ingram Hill, reforms introduced last August mean anyone can set up an infill service area if (a big if) they can get planning consent. Previously, the DoT limited service areas to one every 25 miles.

It will be Ingram Hill's 11th motorway service station, and Road Chef has the distinction - in Bunhill's judgement - of running the least revolting pit stop in Britain. This is Killington Lake on the M6 in Cumbria. It's almost bearable.

Road Chef has prospered, making a pounds 1.6m pre-tax profit on turnover of pounds 86m last year. Ingram Hill, who owns 21.5 per cent of the equity, is comfortably worth a couple of million. A stock market flotation is an option but he seems in no hurry.

He has come a long way from the kitchens of London's Grosvenor House Hotel, where he started his career in 1966 gutting chickens and plucking pheasants.

He is that rare breed, a former manager of Travellers Fare cafes who is prepared to admit to it. In the 1970s he was in charge of cafes at Waterloo, Liverpool Street and Victoria stations. 'I've graduated from the British Rail sandwich to the motorway cup of tea.'

Road Chef was set up with trade union backing in 1972 and was bought out by its management in 1983. Ingram Hill was in the MBO team, which used nothing but a bank loan from Barclays. Gearing was a hairy 362 per cent, but is now down to a manageable 90 per cent. Almost half the 1,000 employees have a stake.

Road Chef is still a minnow beside Granada and Forte, though Clacket Lane will propel it to third-equal in size with Pavilion.

As for that little question about monopoly pricing, the Office of Fair Trading says that, yes, it does get a steady trickle of complaints about prices in service areas, but no, it has not done anything about it. Ingram Hill need not fear that dawn raid from the Monopolies Commission quite yet.

(Photograph omitted)