Whitbread to combine hotel and restaurant businesses with small job losses

Whitbread is to combine its hotel and restaurant division as it looks to save itself £25m a year by 2009.

The leisure giant plans to restructure its management team and outsource its logistics operations to make the savings.

Whitbread, which owns Premier Inn, Costa Coffee, Beefeater and Brewers Fayre, said that the changes would result in a small number of job losses.

Patrick Dempsey, managing director of Premier Inn, will take control of the newly combined hotel and restaurant division.

It is not yet known what the role of Mark Philips, currently managing director of Whitbread Restaurants, will be after the restructure.

More than 300 of Whitbread’s pub restaurants share a site with a Premier Inn, while approximately 100 operate on a stand-alone basis.

Chief executive Alan Parker said in a conference call this morning that the company was in the process of revamping its Brewers Fayre estate, having recently completed the refurbishment of the Beefeater brand.

The first new Beefeater to open for eight years will be unveiled in Birmingham on Monday 3 March in Edgbaston. The site will neighbour a new Premier Inn hotel.

Parker also said that Whitbread was investigating new concepts for a number of sites including the developmental Table Table, which is already in place in 10 sites.

The company said that like-for-like sales in its pub restaurants were up 0.8% in the 50 weeks ending 14 February. Sales at Premier Inn rose 10.5% in comparison with Costa sales up 6.3%.

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By Christopher Walton

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