A glimpse of the former Bar & Grill restaurant at Exeter, situated within the Travelodge motel building. Bar & Grill was a Moto-own pub/restaurant brand, similar to Harvester, serving breakfast, lunch and dinner. Its location, far from the amenity building, means the only custom it really got was those staying in the Travelodge rooms. Therefore, it was rather quiet. The motel building Bar & Grill was situated in was constructed in 1986 and was built with 58 rooms & a restaurant area. When the motel first opened, rooms costed £25 per night. Now, in 2024, this is roughly £73, showing just how much prices are rising. My photo clearly shows table 17, & all the furniture in this restaurant remains intact (for now). The windows are all boarded up and the abandoned seating area appears quite dreary. Bar & Grill opened at Exeter in 2016 and replaced a waitress service branch of Harry Ramsden's, which opened in 1995 & closed in 2013. Most Granada Harry Ramsden's restaurants closed in 2005 by Moto, so this one at Exeter did well to last so much longer. Harry Ramsden's no longer exists on the entire motorway network, however, Welcome Break did have a recent partnership with them whereby Harry Ramsden's was introduced to their new "food courts" during 2013-15. These all closed in 2022 for their own-brand breakfast offer "The Good Breakfast". Bar & Grill only ever opened at Exeter and Lymm Truckstop, & was seen more as a functional, basic brand. Bar & Grill was an extremely rare example of a sit-down, waitress service restaurant introduced in the 2010s. Arlo's was another. A slightly more popular, sit-down restaurant Moto started opening at their busier sites, including Exeter. Arlo's was more patisserie-themed than Bar & Grill, but unfortunately most of their restaurants, including Exeter, permanently closed in 2019. Moto now largely resort to using fast food takeaways at their sites, with many new KFCs & Pret A Mangers opening. It shows that Moto's efforts to bring sit-down dining back to the motorways didn't work and it will very much remain a thing of the past. It's a shame as sit-down, waitress service restaurants were the foundation of every motorway services in the 60s and 70s. As driving was seen as a luxury when motorways were first built, motorway services were much more exclusive & luxurious, with glamorous buffet restaurants. These restaurants were popular, & motorway services were valued more as destinations than pit stops. It's fair to say the passion has rubbed off as more people have started driving, and motorway services are now somewhere to use facilities & grab a quick coffee. Deregulation in the 1980s was supposed to bring new dining ideas to motorway services as these buffet restaurants were loosing popularity and the quality of food was being compromised. Most of these new ideas came in the form of fast food outlets, which snowballed in quantity in the 90s to the point that sit-down dining restaurants were no longer required. Due to how busy Exeter Services gets during holiday periods with people travelling to Cornwall, the former Bar & Grill was handy at preventing the amenity building itself from becoming overcrowded, as those staying at the motel didn't need to leave the building to eat. Moto doesn't seem to have any plans to reinstate this restaurant, which is a shame as it'll just continue lying derelict. They could convert the space into offices? Bar & Grill was never signposted from either directions of the M5, as it wasn't one of Exeter's core brands. Bar & Grill used to only be advertised from this motel building, there was never any trace of the facility from the main amenity building.

Photo taken on 22/12/2023 by Tom Moon.

Assigned to galleries: Exeter, Bar and Grill, M5, Moto, Disused Buildings