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15-472: Toby Carvery is a British carvery chain brand owned and operated by Mitchells & Butlers , which consists of 158 restaurants. The first was in Brentwood - Mr T's Carving Room in around 1978 or 1979. By 1982, there were around Essex and North London. Decor was described as 'mock-Tudor'. In the early 1980s it was known as 'Mr T's C' or 'Mr T's Carving Room'. Michael Sabin was the catering director. The company

30-523: Is available at some sites. This UK-based restaurant or restaurant chain article is a stub . You can help Misplaced Pages by expanding it . Carvery Carveries are often found in pubs and hotels, particularly at weekends, when they offer Sunday roasts to a large number of people. The meat is usually accompanied by potatoes, vegetables, stuffing, gravy and sauces . Carveries existed as early as 1956 in London, in two Lyons Corner Houses. One of

45-695: The Forest Gate (named after Charnwood Forest) in Loughborough added a carvery in November 1996, at a cost of £200,000. The company headquarters was Hagley House in the west of Birmingham. The new (and current) decor and livery was introduced around July 1997, with one of the first being the Walsgrave in Coventry. The (current) decor and livery would become more widely adopted during the course of 1998, but many sites retained

60-592: The Moulin Rouge gone wrong', or 'a toy town eyesore, in the worst Disney tradition' or 'a plastic Barbie land'. By the late 1990s, the pub restaurant scene in the UK was beginning a renaissance, if not starting to boom; the era of pub restaurants across the UK began to pick up haste. By late 1998, the price of the main carvery meal was now lowered to £5.95. Puddings came with the Toby Bottomless Custard Jug. By 1999

75-532: The carv in London" in Harden's 2007 guide before going out of business in 2008. Carvery food is now very popular and is now found in the whole of the UK. Some restaurants in the US use the term or concept, and it is a staple at some buffets . Pub chain A pub chain is a group of pubs or bars operating under a unified brand image. Pubs within a chain are tied houses and can, generally, only sell products which

90-594: The chain owner sanctions. Pubs in a chain normally display their chain branding prominently and may also feature shared aspects, such as menus and staff uniforms. Pub chains can exist as a stand-alone operation, often called a pubco , or can be a division of a larger company, such as a brewery. Pub chains are an evolution of the tied house system. During the latter half of the nineteenth century increased competition between breweries led many of them to buy up local pubs in an attempt to secure markets for their products. Although tied houses had existed in some cities since

105-418: The company was run by Bass Leisure Retail. The parent company subsequently rebranded as Six Continents plc , before the former Bass pub estate was spun off into Mitchells & Butlers . The chain was previously known as "Toby Pub and Carvery", but it was rebranded, removing the pub part of the name. As well as carvery meat, the chain offers vegetarian and vegan food and fish main courses. A breakfast menu

120-487: The former livery and insignia until each site was revamped, sometimes at great cost (£500,000 at 1998 prices). Many sites would be requiring a revamp, by the late 1990s, regardless of any new insignia. By the end of 1998, the new corporate insignia was now well-established on company documentation and literature. The new revamps in the late 1990s were not always welcomed by local council planning committees. The interiors would be salmon-pink; but local councils had no oversight of

135-555: The interior decor. The less-sedate bright new ostentatious colour scheme was found to be slightly gaudy for some council planning departments, who reached for the smelling salts. After the revamps, the previous name of the pub was dropped. Some local residents were far from convinced about the garish look of the colour scheme, who described one, which opened at 5pm on 8 March 1999 on Church Road in Formby, as looking like 'a tacky cafe like something from Blackpool's Golden Mile', 'something like

150-507: The largest pub chains in the UK operating multiple brands of branded pubs. Pub chains such as Punch Taverns and Ei Group own thousands of tenanted pubs which are not branded to retain uniqueness. They are controlled in the brands of beer, ales and lagers and sometimes other beverages that they may sell. Pub chains operating managed houses are frequently run as brands, located near a high street but rarely in predominantly residential areas. Multiple-held pubs do exist in countries other than

165-554: The restaurants, in each of the Strand and the Tottenham Court Road Lyons, was a carvery. They provided a three-course meal with beverage, but all but the carvery items were served by a Nippy (waitress). Even the carvery table had an employee to help those having difficulty in the actual carving. The price at this time was five shillings. In the 1970s and later, many more carveries appeared in London. One well-known carvery

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180-442: The seventeenth century, this period has come to be known as the birth of the tied house system. As well as securing markets for their own products, this system provided an efficient supply chain directly from the brewery to the pub; cutting costs for breweries and allowing complete and uninterrupted control over quality. Most tied houses today are owned by non-brewing pub chains, known as pubco's . A key difference between this, and

195-510: The traditional tied house system, is that pubco's align themselves with specific brewers in order to obtain big discounts; reducing profits for breweries and restricting their ability to control the quality of the end product. In the United Kingdom , there are two types of pub chain, reflecting the ownership of the pub and the style of operations. Pubs are either tenanted or managed. Marston's Brewery and Stonegate Pub Company are two of

210-492: Was known as Toby Inns. Toby Carvery as a brand was founded as part of Bass Charrington in 1985. In 1991, the main carvery was £7.99. Vegetarians had Cheesy Leek and Potato Bake, and Savoury Broccoli and Brie, with approval from the Vegetarian Society . By 1996, a carvery was £6.95; by the mid-1990s there were many more pub-restaurants to directly compete with Not all Toby Restaurants had a self-serve Toby Carvery section -

225-640: Was situated in the Regent Palace Hotel . The restaurant there was on the ground floor, the Art Deco ceiling of which has been reassembled in the new Air W1 building. Later they were operated by pub chains such as Harvester , Brewer's Fayre and Beefeater . The Toby Carvery brand took over many former Beefeater sites. Fuzzy's Grub was a noted but short-lived carvery chain in London , founded in 2002 and voted "Best Traditional British Restaurant, but all but

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