Whitbread

Whitbread Plc
	File:Whitbread log.jpg
Company type	Public
Industry	Leisure Services and Hospitality
Founded	1742
Headquarters	Dunstable, Bedfordshire
Area served	United Kingdom, India, Dubai, Republic of Ireland
Key people	Samuel Whitbread (Founder)
Products	Premier Travel Inn, Brewers Fayre, Beefeater, Costa Coffee, T.G.I. Friday's Country Pub & Dining and David Lloyd Leisure.
Revenue	£181.1m GBP 2006
Number of employees	49,848 ( 03/04/2006 ) 53,483 ( 03/01/2005 )
Subsidiaries	Whitbread Hotels and Restaurants (WHR)
Website	http://www.whitbread.co.uk/

This article is about the Whitbread company. For the sailing race see Volvo Ocean Race. For the book awards, see Costa Book Awards (formerly the Whitbread Book Awards)

Whitbread Group plc is a UK-based hospitality company, managing several popular brands in hotels, restaurants and health and fitness clubs, including Premier Travel Inn, Brewers Fayre, Beefeater, Costa, T.G.I. Friday's and David Lloyd Leisure. The company’s headquarters are based in Dunstable, Bedfordshire and it is listed on the London Stock Exchange, where it is a constituent of the FTSE 250 Index. The company was originally founded as a brewery by Samuel Whitbread and Thomas Shewell in 1742 but has since halted all interests in brewing.

Whitbread’s Businesses

Whitbread's brands include the following:

Premier Travel Inn

Whitbread owns the largest UK hotel chain, the budget Premier Travel Inn. Their next nearest UK rival is the Travelodge chain.

Brewers Fayre

Brewers Fayre is a popular pub-restaurant brand. The pubs are designed to look and feel like traditional local pubs but with a particularly strong family presence.

Beefeater

A similar style to the Brewers Fayre chain, but specialises in grilled foods and steaks.

TGI Friday's

Whitbread currently holds the UK franchise rights to the American restaurant chain TGI Friday's. The restaurants are known for their "over the top" American style and are popular with teenagers for birthday parties. It is also noted for its cocktails including a top-selling Long Island Iced Tea. The Whitbread website claims: "The highly popular Long Island Iced Tea cocktail alone accounts for more than 1.5 million of 34 million cocktails served in the UK since Whitbread first brought the brand to the UK in 1986".

The chain was ranked 15th overall in the FT's annual Best Workplace report, and ranked fourth as the most fun place to work in the UK.

On January 17th 2007 Whitbread announced that the franchise rights for TGI Fridays were being sold to a joint venture between Carlson Restaurants Worldwide Inc and ABN AMRO Capital for £70.4m. It is expected the transaction will complete during March 2007.

Costa Coffee

Whitbread operates more than 500 Costa Coffee outlets across the UK. The Costa chain also operates in the Middle East and India through franchise partners, and in China through a Joint Venture Agreement. It plans for more Costa Outlets to be operated oustide the UK than in its home market within the next 4 years.

David Lloyd Leisure

Whitbread run more than 50 David Lloyd Leisure (DLL) clubs in the UK and Ireland with a further number in Spain, Holland and Belgium. DLL is Britain's biggest tennis operator and manages more than 500 tennis courts.

Touchbase

Touchbase is Whitbread's conferencing and meeting rooms brand. These are normally found in city centres and attached to Premier Travel Inns.

History

Whitbread was set up by Samuel Whitbread who established a partnership with Thomas Shewell in 1742, taking on the name Whitbread & Co Ltd in 1799. In 1750 Samuel Whitbread moved his brewing operations to premises in Chiswell Street on the eastern rim of Georgian London, establishing the first purpose-built mass-production brewery in Britain.

Over the next 200 years Whitbread & Co introduced many brands to the UK market, such as Stella Artois and Heineken, alongside its own brands, which grew in popularity in the second half of the 20th century, before declining in the 1990s as people migrated to more international brands such as Fosters and Budweiser.

After a long history of brewing, the company, now known as Whitbread Group Plc decided in 2001 to sell all its breweries and brewing interests (Whitbread Brewing Company) to Interbrew, now known as InBev. Whitbread-branded alcoholic beverages are still available in the UK, but these are not produced by InBev, merely produced under licence by other producers. InBev controls the use of the Whitbread brand, and the horse's head logo, for use on beverages.

Today, the streamlined Whitbread business has no brewing interests and has moved into the service and leisure sector.

Echoing this shift in business focus, the Whitbread & Co brewery building at 52 Chiswell Street, London still survives, but is now used as a conference and events venue. Beer was last brewed at the site in April 1976. The site itself was only recently sold by Whitbread Group plc to an investment firm as the company looks to return value to its shareholders. This decision has been seen by some in the company as "selling the family silver", as Whitbread seek to distance themselves from their history.

Whitbread has recently offloaded some of its brands and licensed franchises in an effort to streamline the business:

Britvic, a large UK manufacturer of soft drinks, producing brands such as J2O and Pepsi.
Whitbread Inns, standalone pubs with no restaurant attached.
Marriott hotels and clubs in the UK, sold to brand owner Marriott Corporation.
Pizza Hut UK, sold to brand owner Yum!.

In 2006, the decision was also taken to dispose of all the pub restaurants in the Brewers Fayre and Beefeater chains that were not attached to an adjoining Premier Travel Inn. This consisted of 239 sites across the UK, which were all bought by market rival Mitchells and Butlers.

However, Whitbread has recently been hit hard by the global economic slowdown, and has looked to cut costs, as sales growth slows at some of its brands. It recently moved its core operations from Citypoint in central London to Oakley House in Luton, and then in 2006 to smaller offices at Whitbread Court in Dunstable (previously used by the now defunct Whitbread Restaurants Company) in a bid to save money. It also announced a major restructuring of the company and its management in a bid to stem the decline in sales. On 16 December 2005, the company was ejected from the FTSE 100, as its value had dropped below the threshold for entry. However, it is set to re-enter the FTSE 100 on the 18th December at the expensive of nuclear power firm British Energy.

In 1971, the company launched the Whitbread Literary Awards, but in 2005 Whitbread changed its sponsorship to support the Costa Coffee brand, as Whitbread was no longer a customer-facing brand, merely a holding company for the group.

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