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Whitbread sells off 51 restaurants
After announcing that it would be offloading or converting underperforming restaurants earlier this year, hospitality giant Whitbread has confirmed that it has accepted offers on a number of its sites.
In March, it was reported that Premier Inn-owner Whitbread, which operates food and beverage sites including Brewers Fayre and Beefeater, was intending to sell some of its sites, and convert others into hotel rooms.
The following month, it was confirmed that 126 restaurants would be offloaded, at the cost of 1,500 jobs as part of the company’s Accelerating Growth Plan (AGP). According to the company’s H1 FY25 results these plans are now in motion.
Whitbread said: “We have accepted offers on 51 sites for a total consideration of £56m, with construction already underway to build an integrated F&B offer at a number of these sites and with the first sites expected to complete before the end of the financial year. Working with our advisers, we remain confident in being able to exit the remaining sites over the next 18 months.”
Exactly which sites have received offers has not been disclosed.
It was noted that UK food & beverage sales revenue was down by 7% from last year, but Whitbread claimed that it remains “on course to realise expected proceeds from property-related transactions of between £175m and £225m in FY25”.
The company still plans to convert 112 branded restaurants into approximately 3,500 hotel rooms.
The pub sector takes another hit
The news comes as the Campaign for Real Ale (CAMRA), which was highly critical of Whitbread’s closure/conversion of more than 100 of its managed restaurants, published data which revealed that more than 1,200 pubs will likely be shuttered this year, compared to around 1,000 in 2023, and just over 800 in 2022.
“Hardworking licencees who run busy and popular pubs should not be struggling to make ends meet. The trend in business closures that our data has highlighted is truly shocking and I hope this is a wake-up call for Government ahead of the Budget,” commented CAMRA pub and club campaigns director Gary Timmins. “Without meaningful change to our outdated and unfair tax system, this cycle will likely continue, with more licensees’ businesses failing, higher rates of pubs being shuttered to their communities, and new operators stepping into an increasingly hostile business environment.”
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