Whitbread

Whitbread PLC is a multinational hotel, coffee shop and restaurant company headquartered in Dunstable, United Kingdom. Its largest division is Premier Inn, which is the largest hotel brand in the UK with around 650 hotels and over 50,000 rooms. Its Costa Coffee chain has 3,080 shops across 30 countries as of May 2014 and is the world's second-largest international coffee shop chain. Its other brands include the restaurant chains Beefeater Grill, Brewers Fayre, Table Table and Taybarns.

Whitbread is listed on the London Stock Exchange and is a constituent of the FTSE 100 Index.

History

In 1742 Samuel Whitbread formed a partnership with Godfrey and Thomas Shewell and they acquired a small brewery at the junction of Old Street and Upper Whitecross Street and another brewhouse for pale and amber beers in Brick Lane, Spitalfields. Godfrey Shewell withdrew from the partnership as Thomas Shewell and Samuel Whitbread bought the large site of the derelict King's Head brewery in Chiswell Street in 1750. The new brewery was for the production of porter, and was renamed the Hind Brewery after the Whitbread family coat of arms. 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. It was the largest brewery in the world by the 1780s. In 1796 the company produced 202,000 barrels of porter.