Eleven stops · Open until two

Chicken Cooked Properly, Beside the Road

Eleven kitchens and six trucks along the main routes out of the city, all cooking the same short menu: buttermilk-brined chicken fried to order, charcoal rotisserie birds turning where you can see them, hot sandwiches, proper chips and three sauces made in our own kitchen. Nothing sits under a lamp waiting for a customer. Most orders leave the counter in under six minutes, the fryers are cleaned twice a shift, and every stop has parking, a covered queue and a place to eat standing up if you would rather not drive with a box on your lap.

Menu & Stops Find a Kitchen

Pieces of golden fried chicken on a white background

Brightly painted vintage food truck parked on a street

About us

One Truck, One Recipe, Eleven Years

The business began with a single truck parked in a lay-by on a route where lorry drivers had nothing but a vending machine for forty kilometres. The recipe has not changed since: chicken brined in buttermilk overnight, dredged in seasoned flour, fried in clean oil in small batches, and served within a minute of leaving the fryer. Everything we have added over eleven years — the fixed kitchens, the rotisserie, the sandwiches, the sauces — was tested on that first truck before it went anywhere else.

The locations are chosen for practical reasons rather than for footfall statistics. A stop needs safe access from both directions, room for a lorry to park without blocking anything, lighting that makes people comfortable at midnight, and a distance from the nearest alternative that makes the journey worth interrupting. We turn down more sites than we accept, usually because the entry would require a dangerous manoeuvre across a fast road.

Chicken comes from three farms within a hundred and fifty kilometres, delivered fresh four times a week and never frozen. Oil is filtered daily and replaced on a schedule that is written on the wall of every kitchen. Waste oil goes to a biodiesel processor, packaging is paper and card rather than plastic, and each site cleans its own lay-by twice a day, which has done more for our reputation with the local authorities than any amount of paperwork.

Advantages

Why People Pull In Twice

Six things that separate a good roadside stop from one you regret an hour later.

Whole chicken turning on a rotisserie spit

Cooked to Order, Every Time

Nothing is fried in advance and held under a lamp. Chicken goes into the fryer when the order is placed, which means a wait of five or six minutes and a piece that is genuinely crisp rather than steamed soft inside its own box. The rotisserie birds turn continuously and are carved to order. At the busiest hours we run more fryers rather than pre-cooking, and if the queue is long the counter tells you the real waiting time instead of an optimistic one. People plan their journeys around stops that are worth the six minutes.

Clean Oil, Written on the Wall

Old oil is what makes roadside food taste bad and sit badly afterwards. Ours is filtered at every shift change, tested with a polarity meter and changed on a fixed schedule that is posted where customers can read it, along with the date of the last change. Fryers are stripped and cleaned twice a day. It costs noticeably more than the industry norm and it is the single most common reason drivers give for choosing us over the alternative at the next junction.

Safe, Easy Access

Every site has a proper entry and exit with sight lines in both directions, hard standing large enough for lorries and vans, marked pedestrian routes from the parking to the counter, and lighting designed so the whole area is visible at night. Nobody has to cross a fast lane on foot or reverse blind onto a carriageway. Two sites have separate lorry parking with a rest area and washroom access, which is the reason professional drivers make up a third of our custom.

Open When You Need It

Kitchens open at eleven in the morning and close at two the following morning, seven days a week, and four of them run twenty-four hours from Thursday to Sunday. That is deliberately built around when people are actually travelling rather than around office hours. The trucks cover markets, events and the industrial estates at lunchtime. Opening times are published per site and kept to, and if a kitchen has to close early the notice goes out on our channels before anybody drives there.

A Short Menu Done Well

Eleven items rather than sixty: fried chicken by the piece or the bucket, a rotisserie half or whole bird, two sandwiches, chips, slaw, corn, three sauces and two drinks. A short menu means fresher stock, faster service, less waste and a kitchen that can be run properly by three people at two in the morning. It also means everything on it is genuinely good, which is not something a sixty-item roadside menu has ever managed anywhere.

Prices That Do Not Punish Travellers

Roadside food is often priced on the assumption that the customer has no choice. Ours costs roughly what the same food costs in town, drinks are not marked up beyond reason, and there are no charges for sauce, napkins or the use of the washroom. Professional drivers get a standing discount and a free coffee with any hot order. Prices are displayed clearly at the counter and on the board outside so nobody has to queue to find out what a meal will cost.

Busy covered market street with food stalls

Services

What We Do

Kitchens, trucks, catering, deliveries to businesses, events and partnerships with site owners.

Roadside Kitchens

Eleven fixed sites on main routes, each with a full fryer line, charcoal rotisserie, covered queue, indoor standing area, washrooms, free water, phone charging and parking for cars, vans and lorries. Orders are taken at the counter or from a screen, and there is a separate collection point so that a large order does not block the queue. Every kitchen posts its own opening hours, its oil-change record and the name of the manager on duty.

Food Trucks

Six trucks working a published weekly rota of markets, industrial estates, sports grounds, festivals and the two lay-bys that cannot support a permanent building. Each carries a fryer line, a small rotisserie and a full cold chain, with generators sized so that nothing is served from a cool box. The rota is posted every Sunday for the following week, and the trucks stay until the queue has gone rather than to a fixed finishing time.

Bulk Orders and Business Deliveries

Buckets, platters and rotisserie birds for depots, workshops, offices, building sites and family occasions, ordered by phone or online with a fixed delivery window and insulated transport. Standing weekly orders are common among the haulage yards and factories along our routes, and we hold the delivery to the agreed minute because a lunch break is thirty minutes long. Invoicing is monthly for account customers, with no minimum order beyond ten portions.

Events and Private Catering

A truck can be booked for weddings, birthdays, company days, race meetings and village festivals, arriving with everything it needs including power, water and waste containment. Pricing is per head with a menu agreed in advance, and we can run a fixed-price service where guests simply order what they want. We hold full public liability cover and food safety certification, and we send the paperwork to event organisers before they ask for it.

Site Partnerships

Petrol stations, truck stops, garden centres and haulage yards with spare hard standing can host one of our kitchens or a permanently stationed truck under a straightforward agreement: we build, staff and operate; the site owner receives a rent or a share of turnover and gains the footfall. We handle planning, utilities, waste and licensing. Several of our best-performing sites began as an underused corner of somebody else's car park.

Training and Kitchen Standards

Everyone who works a fryer completes a structured training programme covering food safety, oil management, temperature control, allergen handling, cleaning routines and dealing with difficult customers at two in the morning. Managers are promoted from within wherever possible and receive further training in ordering, stock and rota planning. Wages are above the local norm, rotas are published two weeks ahead, and staff eat free on every shift they work.

Contacts

Orders, Sites and Enquiries

Call or write for bulk orders, delivery accounts, truck bookings and the weekly rota. For allergen information, ask at any counter or request the full chart by email — it is updated every time a recipe changes.

Site owners with spare hard standing on a main route are welcome to contact the same office about a partnership.

Office118 CHEMIN LA FONTAINE DES RIFFAUDS, 16600 Ruelle-sur-Touvre, France

Phone+33 5 45 68 21 47

Emailkerbsidechicken@outlook.com

KitchensDaily 11:00–02:00; four sites 24 hours Thursday–Sunday