Whitbread PLC

However, the oil price crashed, and as you know, that's pretty much a global price that's set, and there were no jobs anywhere, and I'd lost my job.

So I left the oil industry, joined a brewing company, old English brewing company, Whitbread.

And I worked partly for their whiskey division.

But the other thing I did was managed a biotech project for them.

And so it wasn't brewed as a separate brew.

But the exception to that is in the 1920s in London, when you see the first brown ales being brewed by people like Whitbread and Barclay Perkins, that they are actually quite separate brews and quite different from their mild ales.

But what you later see is that, like Whitbread, they dropped their double brown ale, which was their original one, which had quite a different recipe, and just continued with their forest brown ale, which was, yeah, really just a dark, mild bottle.

Interesting.

Go

And they had Double Diamond and brands like that.

I went to see Whitbread.

Eventually, I went to see Guinness.

Eventually, I went to see Heineken.

So you have a positive attitude.

So I'd walk in.

I remember going particularly to Watney's and then Whitbread, which were in the east end of London, two very large English breweries that regrettably are both gone now.

But they had very popular beer in England at the time in kegs, metal kegs.

Very unusual.

Whitbreads is the only other... know multi-site uh operator that is in the similar and i own both you know because it just it just improves risk rewards so much could easily attract bidders you know who want to do sale and lease backs that's the other thing um the h1 profits were good with kingfisher they came out three days ago uh eps was up 16 percent um gross margin expansion cost control and a £14 million business rates refund.

So the business rates, you could arguably strip that out as a one-off.

But yeah, you're right.

They were different periods.

But at one stage towards the end, I think I was doing bar work in the evenings for a beef eater, like Whitbread Brewery.

I think the beef eater on the A5 at Hotcliffe.

I think it's now a harvester or something.

Pizza Express owners are exploring a potential sale as the casual dining stalwart tests market appetite for a change in ownership.

Meanwhile, a major Whitbread shareholder is demanding board representation, pushing for a seat at the table following concerns over the group's recent market performance.

Looking at new openings, Japanese giant Pepper Lunch is targeting London for its European debut.

Propel reports that the fast casual business, which operates nearly 600 sites globally, has hired former poke house lead Esther Arnans as European CEO.

A high minimum wage has been relentless in recent years, higher business rates for a lot of them.

That hit Premier Inn, one of my ones, Whitbread, a substantial amount.

And, oh, I forgot the other thing.

There was an, oh, of course, the national insurance, employers, national insurance.

It's terrifying, and, you know, this structural squeeze, it's completely borderless.

The twenty twenty-six report show Whitbread, one of the most prominent global dining leaders, is shutting down two hundred and sixty-one restaurants.

That includes a massive popular steakhouse chain over in the UK.

Right.