In just 12 months the all-you-can-eat restaurant chain Taybarns has taken the catering industry by storm - and there are plans to open 30 new branches. But does it encourage unhealthy eating?
With a "34-metre long food counter" Taybarns is all about quantity. It offers an array of food.
Choose from a chip shop, carvery, pizza, pasta, even what appears to be a new hybrid-cuisine, Texican.
Its menu boasts: "Enjoy as much as you like, as many times as you like. All for one fixed price!"
While other restaurants are closing at an estimated rate of 100 a month, Whitbread which owns Taybarns, has recorded a 3% increase in sales in the last six months to £703.3m.
It is serving almost 10,000 people a week in its most popular branches and there are plans to expand next year, turning 30 Brewers Fayre pubs into Taybarns.
"We offer quality family food at a really good price and it's helped Taybarns succeed where others have failed," says Taybarns operations director and the man behind the concept, Simon Ewins.
"We're doing volumes that are eye watering for the industry. Our Wigan branch, which has been open for a year, has served more meals than the population of the town - 300,000."
Ewins says the company has, unashamedly, based itself in the working-class heart of Britain.
There are Taybarns branches in Newcastle upon Tyne, South Shields, Barnsley, Newcastle-under-Lyme, Coventry, Swansea and Wigan.
Help yourself
It is not yet 6pm on a Friday night in the Coventry branch of Taybarns and already the eaterie is full of people queuing along that famously lengthy food counter.
Customers pay £5.99 - or £7.99 in the evenings - at the door. Then, as the sign says, "grab a plate, help yourself, help yourself again".
"We come here because of the choice of the food and the price, it's really good value" says one woman whose plate holds a burger, chips, sausage and a lamb skewer. "We can all go out as a family. We're all different, but there are no arguments about I don't like this or I don't like that."
The union jack bunting strung across the chip shop, the flames leaping up from the wok and the sweet smell wafting from the dessert counter add to the buzz of excitement among customers. The treacle tart and chocolate sponge are going down well.
TAYBARNS PER MONTH
312kg of tomatoes used
6000kg of potatoes roasted
12,800 chickens cooked
122,200 sausages grilled
588,000 items cutlery washed
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