| Type | Public owned by Whitbread Plc |
|---|---|
| Industry | Hospitality |
| Founded | 1980 |
| Headquarters | Dunstable, England |
| Area served | United Kingdom |
| Products | Food and beverages |
| Parent | Whitbread |
| Website | Brewers Fayre |
Brewers Fayre is a chain of around 125[1] licensed family and casual dining pub restaurants in the United Kingdom, owned by Whitbread.
They are known for serving traditional British pub food, including gammon and steak & ale pie which are among the most popular choices. Nearly all Brewers Fayres are on the site of a Whitbread Premier Inn hotel. Stand-alone sites were sold to Mitchells & Butlers, who converted them to their Innkeeper's Fayre brand in 2007 and then onto their Harvester brand a few years later.
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In the 1980s Whitbread also had the Roast Inns chain. Its slogan was The Family Welcome.
In 1995 50 more outlets were added, at a cost of £85 million, taking the total to 280. At this time the Charlie Chalk Fun Factory was added to about thirty pubs. In 1996 52 were opened, with 17 having a Travel Inn next door, and most were built near motorways. In early 1997 Whitbread introduced the Kiln & Kettle chain, which was similar to Brewers Fayre but without the children. Around the same time 90 more outlets opened.
In May 1999 Whitbread announced it was proposing to leave the brewing industry and attempted to buy 3,600 outlets (including Firkin pubs) from Allied Domecq in a proposed £2.25 billion deal, which they lost out to Punch Taverns. Later in October 1999 Whitbread formed a pubs and bars division (2,900 outlets), and a restaurants division (1,300 outlets) which included Brewers Fayre headed by Bill Shannon. On 25 May 2000 Whitbread announced it was leaving the brewing industry by selling its beers to Interbrew for £400 million, which allowed expansion of its food restaurants. In March 2001 Whitbread solds its non-food pubs to Deutsche Bank for £1.6 billion. In September 2001 34 outlets were put up for sale. In 2003 it announced it would be adding 35 outlets a year over five years.
There used to be many standalone Brewers Fayre pubs, but in 2006 Whitbread agreed to dispose of the 239 standalone Brewers Fayre and Beefeater sites. These had traditionally lower revenues and as growth had stalled in them compared to the still-growing Premier Inn sites, they were seen as an obstacle to the company's sales growth. Sites were sold to market rival Mitchells and Butlers, with the standalones that remained being on sites with plans for a future Premier Inn development.
For a period in the early 2000s, some larger outlets were re-branded as Brewster's to differentiate a set of more family-oriented pubs from those more suited to adults. Although very similar in the environment and food offer, Brewster's placed a greater emphasis on entertaining children: pubs had a multi-level play area known as the 'Fun Factory', children's entertainers and ice-cream machines. The brand was phased out in 2005, with most of its 147 outlets returned to the Brewers Fayre brand, after Brewster's had been identified as Whitbread's poorest-performing restaurant brand[2] .
Some Brewers Fayre restaurants were converted to Table Table restaurants, a more contemporary pub restaurant brand of Whitbread's which had grown to 111 outlets by 2010[1].
Starting in 2008, a small number of restaurants were converted to the Taybarns format, an all-you-can-eat buffet restaurant. Whitbread announced plans to convert more Brewers Fayre sites to the Taybarns brand during 2009 and 2010[3], but these had not taken place by the end of 2010, partly due to the huge cost of such conversions.
Despite the previous policy of disposals and rebranding of Brewers Fayres sites, the chain has seen a resurgence in popularity fuelled by new menu offers such as 2 for £9 meal deals. There has been a significant refurbishment programme, with improvements born out of a December 2009 trial, where the Papermill in High Wycombe was refurbished with the addition of hot counters in the restaurant and includes theme nights, like "curry night" and "chinese night" in addition to the main menu. after a successful trial at this location the programme has been rolled out to further Brewers Fayre locations from September 2010, as a more cost effective solution to the investment that a Taybarns or a Table Table restaurant entails, which Brewers Fayre currently sit behind in sales and profit.
According to Whitbread, it was "benefiting from sales at its Brewers Fayre and Premier Inn chain" in a 2011 economy in which "domestic price pressures near their highest levels in two decades."[4]
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