Foodcourt/Customer seating area at Clacket Lane Eastbound, located just ahead of the main entrance, opposite all the food outlets. Despite no structural changes & a strong 90s feel of the interior of Clacket Lane East, the interior and customer seating has undergone significant changes overtime. In 2012, the layout of the food court was changed from a long corridor design to a “snake” walkway, obscurely directing customers past all of the food units, increasing their chance of trade. This was done as McDonald’s opened at Clacket Lane East in 2012 and there wasn’t space to keep the original layout. At the start of 2020, Roadchef began a large scale refurbishment of the food court here, introducing LEON, removing Fresh Food Cafe, and creating a hybrid unit. With this, the seating area was updated & made slightly larger. When Clacket Lane opened in 1993, Roadchef designed the site to be in-keeping with the rural surroundings, so they ensured their buildings had low ceilings. Additionally, beams were used on the ceilings to add to a “country” feel of the site. Since then, Roadchef have made Clacket Lane look more like any of their other sites. The low ceilings and obscure route between the entrance & toilets is the reason some customers consider Clacket Lane East to be a claustrophobic place. Seating here wasn’t the tidiest. A similar design of seating area can be seen at Maidstone on the M20, quite near here. The relatively new amenity building (31 years old) means the upkeep of the site is easier for Roadchef. It requires less maintenance than older buildings on the motorway, such as Newport Pagnell (65 years old). Between 1993 & 2008, Westbound was considered the largest services in the Country, being bright and airy. Oddly, Eastbound was never described similarly despite the two sites being the same size. Given the number of food brands which don’t have their own large seating area at Clacket Lane East (2), there’s plenty of seating available here, which is useful for when it’s as busy as it was today. My visit was taken during the Easter holiday when more families etc are travelling, meaning Clacket Lane Eastbound was packed and quite stressful to use. However, the large amounts of seating meant there were no customers who had to stand up/takeaway their food. There’s also some picnic benches near the entrance, so customers have a small amount of additional seating to use in clement weather conditions.

Photo taken on 05/04/2024 by Tom Moon.

Assigned to galleries: Clacket Lane, M25, Roadchef