Whitbread Plc

The hospitality industry is dominated in the UK by Whitbread PLC. It has expanded into all sectors of the hospitality industry including hotels, restaurants, cafes and fitness clubs to become the UK's leading hospitality company.

Whitbread's most famous brands today include:

• Restaurants - Whitbread owns the popular pub restaurant brand Brewers Fayre and Beefeater. These pubs are aimed at the family and designed to look and feel like traditional local pubs. Brewers Fayre was founded in 1980 and currently operates over 263 restaurants around the UK. Nearly all Brewers Fayre are situated on the site of a Whitbread Travel Inn.

The Beefeater chain of restaurants currently has 129 restaurants across the UK. It has invested £45 million in upgrading the business.

• Hotels - Premier Travel Inn is the biggest hotel brand in the UK. In 1987 Whitbread opened the Travel Inn hotels to compete with the Travelodge brand. Growth has steadily seen Whitbread expand to over 470 hotels in the UK and Northern Ireland. In 2004 Whitbread acquired Premier Lodge adding another 141 hotels to the company's Travel Inn chain. They have since re-branded all hotels as Premier Travel Inn, but in 2007 announced another re-brand to take on the name Premier Inn.

• Cafes - Costa Coffee is one of the largest and fastest growing coffee houses in the UK. It currently has over 550 stores in the UK and over 150 stores in other parts of the world including Bulgaria, China, Egypt and Pakistan. It operates almost 200 outlets in airports and Waterstones bookstores.

Whitbread PLC Origins

Samuel Whitbread was the founder of a brewery in 1742. In 1750 he established the first purpose built mass production brewery in Britain. The company he founded was incorporated in 1889 and over the next 200 years, Whitbread & Co introduced many different brands to the UK drinks market.

In 2001, Whitbread sold its breweries and made the decision to exit the pubs and bars business. Whitbread PLC now focuses primarily on the service and leisure sector and now has no brewing interests in the UK. It is streamlining the business and so has offloaded many of its brands and licensed franchises that it has acquired over the years. These include Britvic, Marriott hotels, TGI Fridays, Pizza Hut, David Lloyd Leisure and Threshers.

The Whitbread share price has increased steadily over the years as the company has developed and grown. In February 2007, 850 employees of Whitbread collectively made profits of nearly £4 million if they chose to cash in their options as part of the annual share save scheme.Whitbread now has around 45,000 employees working in its restaurants, hotels and service departments.

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