Whitbread closes 106 Beefeater restaurants on 10 September

Whitbread has confirmed that 106 Beefeater restaurants will close on 10 September, as part of what the company describes as its exit from branded restaurants in the United Kingdom.

According to The Caterer, 89 Brewers Fayre sites are also due to close under the same restructuring, and the Beefeater Reward Club closed on 31 August. The company has said 3,800 roles are affected across a UK and Ireland workforce of about 30,000.

Whitbread set out the plan on 30 April. Chief executive Dominic Paul said at the time that, following a comprehensive review, the company had outlined a five-year plan that included its proposed exit from all remaining branded restaurants in the UK to become a pure-play hotel business. The company has said it intends to carry out that exit at pace.

A hotel group has decided its restaurants are a cost rather than a product.

What Whitbread has said about Beefeater

The company has framed the closures in financial terms. It has targeted 250 million pounds in cost efficiencies over five years and 2 billion pounds in shareholder returns. It has forecast a 160 million pound reduction in food and beverage sales and a 10 million pound reduction in profit as a result of the changes.

Whitbread has also said it plans to sell 1.5 billion pounds of freehold property, reducing the share of sites it owns from about 50% to about 30%. The company has not published a site-by-site list of the Beefeater restaurants closing on 10 September.

The wider picture in British hospitality

The closures land in a market that is already contracting. Britain's licensed sector recorded 1,839 closures between March and June, according to NIQ's Hospitality Market Monitor, against 1,794 openings in the same period. The trade body UKHospitality has forecast that more than 2,000 venues could close during 2026 without business rates support.

Whitbread's hotel business, Premier Inn, is not part of the restaurant exit. The company has said the restructuring is intended to leave it operating hotels alone. Its next scheduled financial update will show what the September closures did to trading. Further coverage sits in the hospitality section.