Beefeater Closes Final 106 Restaurants as Whitbread Completes Major Hospitality Restructuring

Beefeater has this week closed its remaining 106 UK restaurants, bringing the long-running restaurant brand to an end as parent company Whitbread presses ahead with a major restructuring of its hospitality operations.

The final Beefeater sites closed on Thursday 10 September, following the closure earlier this month of Whitbread’s other branded restaurant operations, including Brewers Fayre, Table Table, Bar + Block and Cookhouse + Pub.

The restructuring affects around 3,800 roles across Whitbread’s UK and Ireland workforce, although the company has said it will seek opportunities to redeploy employees elsewhere within the business where possible.

The closures form part of a wider five-year strategy announced by Whitbread as the company seeks to move away from operating separately branded restaurants and concentrate its resources on its Premier Inn hotel business.

Beefeater brand brought to an end

Beefeater, which has operated in the UK since the 1970s, has been one of the country’s best-known branded pub-restaurant businesses, with many of its sites located alongside Premier Inn hotels.

Whitbread confirmed in July that all 106 remaining Beefeater restaurants would cease trading on 10 September.

The closure follows the company’s decision to withdraw from its remaining branded restaurant portfolio. Brewers Fayre’s 89 restaurants closed on 7 September, while Whitbread’s other branded restaurant businesses closed on 3 September.

The move effectively ends an era for a collection of familiar names on Britain’s high streets and roadside hospitality locations.

Sites to support Premier Inn expansion

Whitbread says the decision is not an abandonment of food and drink, but represents a fundamental change in how it provides hospitality to its hotel customers.

The company intends to replace the separate restaurant brands with integrated food and beverage operations within or alongside Premier Inn hotels.

According to Whitbread, the new approach will provide a more consistent proposition for hotel guests while also creating opportunities to increase the number of Premier Inn bedrooms across its estate.

Whitbread chief executive Dominic Paul said at the time: “We plan to convert all our remaining branded restaurants to an integrated food and beverage offer that is preferred by our hotel guests and will unlock the addition of more highly profitable extension rooms.”

“Our continued efforts to drive our commercial plan and efficiencies will extend our market-leading position and allow us to take share from our competitors, many of which are struggling to grow.”

“As a business which recruits around 15,000 people every year, we expect to be able to retain a significant proportion of those affected and will be looking to redeploy as many of our impacted colleagues as possible.”

The company estimates that the transition could facilitate approximately 600 additional hotel rooms.

Whitbread’s strategy also includes selling some former restaurant properties as going concerns, meaning that not every former Beefeater or Brewers Fayre site will necessarily disappear as a hospitality venue.