Whitbread shuts all 106 Beefeater restaurants, pivots to Premier Inn expansion
Whitbread will close every remaining Beebeater outlet in the UK today, ending a 52-year run and shifting focus to its Premier Inn hotels.
All 106 Beefeater restaurants will cease operations today, marking the end of the 52-year-old steakhouse brand. Whitbread, the parent company, announced the move in July and attributed it to mounting cost pressures from government policy, specifically higher National Insurance contributions and business rates. Chief executive Dominic Paul said the traditional pub-restaurant model had become unsustainable.
Whitbread will now concentrate on expanding its Premier Inn hotel chain, converting many former Beefeater sites into integrated kitchen spaces for hotel guests and planning to add roughly 600 new rooms. Locations that fail to meet expected hotel returns will be sold or leased back. The sweeping restructuring puts around 3,800 jobs at risk across the UK and Ireland, though the firm says it will try to redeploy staff within its hotel business.
