Whitbread 'looking to sell 250 pubs' for £600m

Whitbread is reportedly looking to sell off more than half of its 440 pub-restaurants for an estimated £600m.

According to The Times, the group is aiming to dispose of 250 of its sites, which include the Beefeater and Brewers Fayre brands.

Whitbread has approached pub companies including Heineken and Marstons as part of a tightly run sales process, the paper said.

Many of Whitbread’s pub-restaurants are located next door to Premier Inn hotels but have struggled with a lack of demand.

Whitbread chief executive Dominic Paul wrote in its annual report that despite a rise in hotel guests its restaurants were trading 4% below pre-pandemic levels.

At the same time, sales across Whitbread’s 840 UK Premier Inn hotels were 37% up on 2019/20.

“The UK pub restaurant market remains challenging with the cost-of-living crisis and high inflationary pressures impacting the recovery in demand,” said Paul.

A number of other major pub groups have looked to dispose of underperforming sites this year. In February it was reported that Stonegate, Britain's biggest pub operator, was looking to sell around 1,000 of its c.4,500 sites.

Admiral Taverns, which runs 1,600 sites, put 44 pubs on the market in April.

Marston's, which operates over 1,400 pubs, confirmed in March that 61 of its sites were on the market while JD Wetherspoon was looking to sell around 45 pubs at the end of last year.

Whitbread has been contacted for comment.