Bassetlaw restaurant closures as Beefeater and Brewers Fayre brands close doors
Two Worksop area restaurants face closure in early September this year, as Whitbread brings in to force changes that were first broached three months ago.
Both The Dukes Beefeater grill restaurant in Worksop, and the King William lV at Oldcotes, a Brewers Fayre restaurant, will cease to operate from early September.
Workers there were aware that the venues could face permanent closure in the future, but were only informed of the September date within recent weeks.
Owners Whitbread announced in April that their Five Year Plan could include the loss of almost 4,000 jobs, or 12 per cent of staff at sites across the country, as it intends to become a pure-play hotel business focused on Premier Inn, the UK’s number one hotel brand.
It added: 'This change will involve exiting all our remaining branded restaurants, which trade under brands including Beefeater and Brewers Fayre, a number of which will be converted into approximately 600 additional Premier Inn rooms, with the remainder expected to be sold as going concerns.
“The proposed changes build on the success of our Accelerating Growth Plan, announced in 2024, which involved the conversion of over 200 branded restaurants to additional rooms, and the creation of an integrated restaurant in each hotel."
Staff members at The Dukes in Worksop said they understood the restaurant there will be merged in to the hotel, probably for the use of hotel guests only.
They added that some staff redundancies were likely, while others would be deployed elsewhere, and that formal notice of the changes had only been given very recently.
Workers at the King William lV Brewers Fayre restaurant in Oldcotes said the closing date given for the venue is September 7, but they were unclear as yet what will happen as there is still the possibility of takeover by another company.
Around 30 staff there will be affected, with transfer positions available to some at Premier Inn sites, and redundancy packages on offer.
Whitbread's April statement read: 'As a business which recruits around 15,000 people every year, we expect to be able to retain a significant proportion of those affected and will be looking to redeploy as many of our impacted colleagues as possible.
'However, we do anticipate that proposed changes, which are subject to consultation, would result in a reduction of around 3,800 roles of a total UK and Ireland workforce of around 30,000.’
The Beefeater brand has been trading for 50 years, and Brewers’ Fayre for 47 years.