The new Curried Away curry bar at Folkestone, located between “The Cafe” & Don Air Kebabs, in the food court area, left of the main entrance. This curry bar opened earlier in 2024 and replaced a desert outlet called the Treats, which was never open. Curried Away’s theme colour of purple matches the former “Treats” café, and makes the unit more obvious as no other food outlets here have the same theme colour. Curried Away wasn’t open during my visit as it opens at 1:30pm, and I got here at 12pm. An Indian takeaway is a first for Folkestone, but customers are more likely to choose other food outlets here based on familiarity (such as KFC or Subway). It will likely not last that long, but it’s similar to Extra’s “Tapori” offer at Cobham and Beaconsfield. This unit has no seating of its own, so shares a large seating area with other food outlets. The surge of Asian-themed restaurants at motorway services began with Chozen Noodle opening at Roadchef sites during 2014. Due to a successful customer reaction, Welcome Break have partnered with Chopstix and Moto have opened own-brand “Chow” stores. Asian restaurants offer customers a different food offer, as motorway services can get repetitive on fast food & coffee shops. It’s a small unit, but is brightly lit inside & so far, has good reviews online. I’m not sure whether “Curried Away” is a separate brand which lease the unit from Stop 24, or is a Stop24 own-brand curry bar. Now that Stop24 has been bought by a Getlink company, they will be looking to add several facilities to the site to see what customers want. Anything that isn’t grabbing more trade will close. In the bottom-left corner of this pic is a queue barrier for the former Cafe 24 coffee outlet here. It’s now used to divide the seating up, but could leave customers confused. Curried away deliver to the local area, which is handy given Folkestone is located on a junction & easy to access via the A20/B2068. When this unit is open, I can’t imagine it would take much trade from other food units here (except the similar Chopstix Noodle Bar). Curried Away isn’t signposted from either side of the M20, so customers stopping wouldn’t expect to find a curry place here. Curried Away also isn’t advertised at all around the site, but this could be due to its new age, and Stop24 may advertise it more in due course.

Photo taken on 21/07/2024 by Tom Moon.

Assigned to galleries: Folkestone, M20, Stop 24