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.
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.â€
Whitbread warned in late 2025 that Rachel Reeves's 2025 budget tax policies would cost it an extra £50m this year, amid changes to the way business rates are calculated. This came hot on the heels of an earlier cost squeeze from higher wage bills and rising food prices.
The FTSE 100 company, which has more than 800 Premier Inn hotels in the UK, has been under pressure from American activist investor Corvex, a New York-based hedge fund, to rethink its business strategy.
The hedge fund said in December it had taken a 6.05% stake in Whitbread, making it the company's second biggest single shareholder. It said at the time Whitbread's share price undervalued some of its assets, including its UK portfolio of leasehold properties.
Whitbread's new strategy means it will become a pure hotel business, about seven years after it sold the Costa Coffee chain to soft drinks company Coca-Cola in a near-£4bn deal.
This means that as it stands, the Beefeater restaurant brand – established in 1974 and known for serving steaks and classic pub dishes – as well as the Brewers Fayre chain will disappear from UK high streets.
The announcement came as Whitbread reported that its revenues for the year to 26 February were flat compared with the same period a year earlier.
Whitbread shares were down more than 3% on Thursday afternoon, making it one of the biggest fallers on the FTSE 100. The company's shares have fallen 20% in the past six months.
