Beefeater and Brewers Fayre restaurants are about to disappear from the UK, bringing job losses and uncertainty to thousands of people.
Whitbread, the company behind Premier Inn, confirmed final trading days for all its branded restaurants with almost 200 restaurants closing their doors for good in September.
The 89-strong Brewers Fayre chain will shut on September 7 as part of Whitbread’s previously-announced move to ditch all its separately-branded restaurants.
Whitbread has also confirmed the closure date for all its other restaurant brands, with 106 Beefeater sites set to shut on September 10 and other brands such as Bar + Block, Table Table and Cookhouse + Pub closing on September 3.
The decision was revealed in April as the firm announced plans to cut around 3,800 jobs in the UK and Ireland under a new five-year strategy to make £250m in savings.
The group is replacing the chains with restaurants inside its Premier Inn hotels, which it said was more efficient and “highly popular with hotel guests”.
It is still planning to increase the number of hotel rooms it has open to 96,000 by the 2031 financial year, from the current of approximately 86,600.
The hospitality group said it wanted to save money in light of cost pressures from business rates and national insurance contributions.
In April, Whitbread chief executive Dominic Paul said: “We always challenge ourselves to improve and, in light of significant cost increases in the form of business rates and national insurance, as well as the implied market discount to our inherent value, we’ve looked hard at the options open to us to maximise value creation over the medium and long-term.”
“This plan will transform Whitbread into a higher-margin, higher-returning pure-play hotel business,” he added at the time.
Restoring Britain’s high streets has been a central focus for the prime minister since taking office in No 10, with pledges to allow councils to block vape and betting shops and cut business rates for pubs.
Andy Burnham announced venues would benefit from a 20 per cent cut in business rates from April next year as he seeks to “bring hope back across the country”.
But billionaire businessman Mike Ashley, the founder of Sports Direct, has described his high street recovery strategy as “delusional”, insisting it will fail to help salvage British retail.
The Frasers founder launched a strong critique of the prime minister, saying that shops will be “further devastated” unless business rates are reduced.
