Whitbread plc (LON:WTB) is the UK’s largest hotel, restaurant and coffee shop operator with 40,000 employees. The group operates in two segments: Hotels & Restaurants and Costa.
In the UK it had around 2,500 hotels, restaurants and coffee shops as of April 2013. Its largest division is Premier Inn, the largest hotel brand in the UK with around 650 hotels and over 50,000 rooms. The company also has two Premier Inn hotels in India and four in the Middle East and a target for 50 international hotels by 2018.
Whitbread’s coffee shop brand, Costa, has nearly 1,600 stores in the UK and close to 1,000 in 28 countries worldwide. Costa is the largest and fastest growing coffee shop chain in the UK. The first Costa coffee shop opened in London in 1978 and in 1995 Whitbread acquired Costa with 41 stores nationwide.
Whitbread’s restaurant brands include Brewers Fayre, Beefeater Grill with over 140 outlets across the UK, Taybarns, and Table Table with 105 outlets in the UK.
Whitbread plc is headquartered in Dunstable, England, United Kingdom. The company was first listed on the London Stock Exchange in 1948.
Andy Harrison is Whitbread plc’s Chief Executive. Anthony Habgood is Chairman.
The company was established in 1742 when Samuel Whitbread founded his first brewery. In 1971, Whitbread was Britain's third-largest brewer by output. In 2001, the group decided to sell all its breweries and brewing interests to Interbrew, now InBev.
Whitbread formerly sponsored the Whitbread Round the World Race, now the Volvo Ocean Race.