Product Code Database
Whitbread, previously trading as Whitbread, Martineau & Co., is a British multinational hotel and restaurant company headquartered in Houghton Regis, England. The business was founded as a brewery in 1742 by Samuel Whitbread in partnership with Godfrey and Thomas Shewell, with premises in London at the junction of Old Street and Upper Whitecross Street, along with a brewery in Brick Lane, Spitalfields. Samuel Whitbread bought out his partners, expanding into porter production with the purchase of a brewery in Chiswell Street, and the company had become the largest brewery in the world by the 1780s.
Its largest division is currently Premier Inn, which is the largest hotel brand in the UK with over 785 hotels and 72,000 rooms. Until January 2019 it owned Costa Coffee but sold it to The Coca-Cola Company. Whitbread's brands include the restaurant chains Beefeater, Brewers Fayre and Table Table.
Whitbread is listed on the London Stock Exchange and is a constituent of the FTSE 100 Index.
While not the first to brew porter, Whitbread was the first to exploit it commercially on a large scale. This coincided with an increase in beer consumption in the UK, following regulations to limit the sale of gin owing to the excesses of the Gin Craze. By 1758 production at Chiswell street was 65,000 barrels and the firm had become the largest firm of porter brewers in the UK. From the outset, Whitbread was the leading financial partner, and solely responsible for management, and in 1761, Whitbread acquired Shewell's share of the business for £30,000.
By the 1780s Whitbread had become the largest brewery in the world. In 1796 the company produced 202,000 barrels of porter. The firm struggled after the death of Samuel Whitbread Sr, and saw ownership transfer to his son, also called Samuel Whitbread. The company adopted the name Whitbread & Co. Ltd in 1799.
In her published 1877 autobiography, John Martineau I's niece, author Harriet Martineau, wrote that she had been a guest at "the great Brewery" in December 1831 where she had presented herself "without notice" to her "kind cousin John's and his family" at the "great Brewery where night after night, the brewery clock struck twelve, while the pen was still pushing on in my trembling hand". She continued: "I was really glad to be alone during those three eventful weeks, - feeling myself no intruder and being under the care of attentive servants".
By 1870, Whitbread had begun producing bottled beers for sale and continued to expand production. On 24 July 1889, the company became a registered limited liability company. In 1914, the firm claimed it was "the largest beer bottler in the world."
By the 1870s, John Martineau II had bought land in Eversley where he had boarded with his tutor Charles Kingsley. This was, as reported by the Bury Free Press in 1902, 'to rebuild cottages and to build fresh ones realising, long before it became the popular cry, that the fundamental basis for improving the health, happiness and morals of England was decent and healthy housing.’
In 2000, The Guardian reported that Whitbread was the country's third largest brewer and that Guinness was the largest.
In the 1920s and 1930s, the company bought out several other brewers, including the Forest Hill Brewery and its pubs, and later the Kent Brewery Frederick Leney & Sons, with 130 of its pubs. The company was also reorganised under the leadership of Sir Sydney Neville and introduced new ales, including Double Brown ale. Whitbread ended regular production of porter in 1940 due to its declining popularity and a need to rationalise its product range following Second World War damage to its brewery sites. 565 Whitbread pubs were also extensively damaged in the war, primarily during the The Blitz.
The company was first listed on the London Stock Exchange in 1948 following a decision by the principal owners to take the company public under the direction of WH (Bill) Whitbread. The next three decades saw Whitbreads merged with over a dozen other regional breweries, including Tennant Brothers of Sheffield in 1961 and Brickwoods in 1971. Between 1961 and 1971, Whitbread's output increased from 46 to 160 million imperial gallons (2.1 to 7.4 million hectolitres) and it became Britain's third-largest brewer by output.
In 1962, Queen Elizabeth II and Queen Elizabeth, the Queen Mother paid a private visit to Colonel W.H. Whitbread (1900-1994) at Chiswell Street, 175 years after their respective forebears - King George III and his wife Queen Charlotte - had met at the same place on 24 May, 1787. A Managing Director at the time, John 'Jack' Edmund Martineau retired the following year but remained on the Board as a Director until 1977. By 1978, the lower part of the firm's Porter Tun Room was re-equipped to house the 272 feet long Overlord Embroidery. This had been commissioned by Baron Dulverton and donated to the nation by him in 1973. It was designed by Sandra Lawrence and took the Royal School of Needlework five years to complete. It was opened at Whitbread on 6th June 1978, the 34th anniversary of Operation Overlord, by Queen Elizabeth the Queen Mother who, having admired the embroidery, asked for more light on the face of the King.
In 1971, Whitbread inaugurated the Whitbread Book Awards. (CBA-Past-Winners-2015-Version.pdf) . Costa Book Awards. Retrieved 12 September 2015. The next year, Whitbread became the initiating sponsor of the Whitbread Round the World Race, a sailing yacht race Circumnavigation held every three years. Whitbread sponsored the race until 2001. In 1973, the company purchased Long John International, a Scottish distiller whose brands included Laphroaig whisky and Plymouth gin. Later spirit acquisitions, also included the distiller James Burrough and the brand Beefeater Gin which was later sold.
Whitbread acquired a 20% stake in Television South for £6.5M from European ferries in April 1984.Whitbread buys £6m TVS stake. By Derek Harris Commercial Editor. The Times, Thursday, 12 Apr 1984; pg. 18 By 1982, the company turnover exceeded £1 billion for the first time. In 1984, Samuel Charles Whitbread became chairman and a reorganisation of the company took place into separate divisions; the spirits arm, including Laphroaig was sold to Allied Domecq in 1989.
The company diversified into other hospitality holdings and invested in new ventures in the 1980s and 1990s, including Beefeater, Pizza Hut, Berni Inns, Heineken Steak Bars and TGI Fridays. In the early 1990s, Whitbread was required to sell almost 2,500 pubs, as a result of the Supply of Beer (Tied Estate) Order 1989 (SI 1989/2390).
In July 1996, Whitbread purchased the Pelican Group (comprising 110 restaurants under the Dôme, Mamma Amalfi and, primarily, Café Rouge brands) for £133m, and in November 1996, Whitbread acquired the restaurant group BrightReasons (owner of brands including Bella Pasta and Pizzaland) for £46m.
In 2005, it moved its core operations from CityPoint in central London, to Oakley House in Luton, and then, in 2006, to larger offices at Whitbread Court in Dunstable. In 2006, it went on to sell 239 of its 271 Beefeater and Brewers Fayre sites to Mitchells & Butlers, who rebranded them into Harvester, Toby Carvery and a selection of other brands.
In 2013, as part of the 2013 horse meat scandal, DNA tests ordered by Whitbread revealed that horsemeat was present in some meat products sold in outlets owned by the company, at the time Britain's biggest hotel group. On 26 February 2013 Whitbread vowed to remedy the unacceptable situation.
In 2018, Whitbread faced pressure from two of its largest shareholders, hedge fund Sachem Head and activist group Elliott Advisers, to break itself up by splitting off the Costa Coffee chain, the theory being the individual businesses would be worth up to 40% more than the current market capital value. On 25 April 2018, Whitbread announced its intention to demerge Costa. On 31 August 2018, it announced that The Coca-Cola Company had agreed to buy Costa Coffee for £3.9bn.
In September 2020, the company announced that they would be cutting jobs, warning that 6,000 staff could lose employment. The company blamed the cuts on a slump in hotel guest numbers since the beginning of the UK's lockdown in response to the COVID-19 pandemic.
Sir Samuel Whitbread died in January 2023 and was the last family chairman of the brewery, who hastened the company’s move from beer to leisure.
|
|
