Beefeater closure: Whitbread shuts its last 106 restaurants

The Beefeater closure is complete: Whitbread has shut the last of its 106 UK restaurants, ending nearly 50 years of the carvery chain. The final site traded on September 10, the last of three closure dates this month that also emptied Table Table, Cookhouse + Pub and Brewers Fayre sites.

The shutdowns carry out a restructuring Whitbread announced in April, aimed at cutting £250 million in costs and returning £2 billion to shareholders over five years. The company is exiting branded restaurants entirely to focus on its Premier Inn hotel business.

About 3,800 roles are at risk across Whitbread's 30,000-strong UK and Ireland workforce. The company said it recruits roughly 15,000 people a year and will try to redeploy affected staff into hotel roles where possible.

Whitbread is trading 106 restaurants for one thing: a hotel business with nothing else attached.

"We will continue to offer a great breakfast and dinner at all hotels, replacing branded restaurants with a restaurant inside the hotel," Whitbread said in a statement.

A pure-play hotel business

Food and drink will now run as an integrated part of each Premier Inn, a format already used in more than half of the chain's hotels. Whitbread expects the shift to cut net capital investment by more than £1 billion and to recycle about £1.5 billion through property sales, taking owned freeholds from roughly half its estate down to 30%.

Mitchells & Butlers bought seven former Whitbread sites earlier in 2026, converting them into Miller & Carter and Toby Carvery restaurants, one sign of where the freed-up real estate is heading.

What the numbers cost Whitbread

Whitbread expects the closures to cut food and beverage sales by about £160 million and profit by roughly £10 million, costs it has weighed against the savings from running fewer, larger sites under one hotel roof.

The Beefeater name outlives the chain in name only: Whitbread has not ruled out reviving branded menus inside Premier Inn dining rooms, but as a stand-alone restaurant business, Beefeater is done. British diners are already paying more for what remains, a trend also visible in Spain's restaurant price rises this summer.