Last Beefeater and Brewers Fayre restaurants to close, with loss of 3,800 jobs, Premier Inn owner says

Premier Inn owner Whitbread is to cut about 3,800 jobs in the UK and Ireland and shut its remaining Beefeater and Brewers Fayre restaurants as it resets its five-year business strategy, amid tax rises and pressure from a US activist investor.

The cuts will affect about 12% of Whitbread’s 30,000-strong workforce in the UK and Ireland working in its Beefeater and Brewers Fayre restaurants, which are usually located next to, or inside, Premier Inn hotels. The company said consultations with affected employees would begin immediately.

Whitbread said it expected to retain a “significant proportion” of staff affected and would try to find them alternative roles, given it hires about 15,000 people each year.

The cuts come after Whitbread began a new review of its business in November, a year after it first announced its five-year plan, after it was hit by higher costs in the chancellor’s budget.

The Premier Inn logo. Photograph: Gerard Ferry/Alamy

Britain’s largest hotel operator had already started converting some of its underperforming Beefeater and Brewers Fayre restaurants into hotel rooms and now intends to continue the policy across the remaining 197 restaurants.

The move will involve Whitbread selling and leasing back £1.5bn of its freehold properties. Unusually for the hotel sector, the company owns a significant proportion of its hotels, although it said it now intended to “recycle” £1.5bn to “fund future growth” and would increasingly hope to lease its hotels.

Dominic Paul, Whitbread’s chief executive, said: “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.”