Two major UK restaurant chains look set to disappear for good, as their owner announces a major shakeup of the business.

It means currently the Brewers Fayre brand will disappear from Abergavenny as all its locations in the UK are cut from Whitbread’s portfolio. They will also be overhauling all the remaining Beefeater restaurants in the UK and Ireland too.

Premier Inn, which the hospitality giant also owns, is set to remain open as usual. Whitbread has blamed soaring costs and taxes for the reason it is closing all of its remaining restaurants.

"We always challenge ourselves to improve and, in light of significant cost increases in the form of business rates and national insurance, as well as the implied market discount to our inherent value, we've looked hard at the options open to us to maximise value creation over the medium and long-term,” said Dominic Paul, Chief Executive.

While some staff are expected to be offered roles elsewhere in the company, such as Premier Inn hotels like Abergavenny, which are just a stone’s throw across the car park from the restaurant, the cuts to the workforce still remain subject to a consultation of Whitbread colleagues. There are expected to be 3,800 redundancies made across the company.

The closure of the restaurants come after a further business review in November, where Whitbread blamed the projected higher costs of running its business on the Chancellor, Rachel Reeves’ budget. It warned in 2025 that new tax policies would cost an extra £50m per year to keep its venues open.

Some hotels are also likely to welcome an integrated food and drink option in-house instead of the existing arrangements between the restaurants and the hotel giant, while all of the remaining 197 locations could be turned into more hotel rooms.

Whitbread will now become a solely hotel-focussed business, having already sold the Costa Coffee chain to Coca-Cola in a deal totalling almost £4bn.