Red_Wedge_

Premier Inn owner Whitbread is closing all 197 remaining Beefeater and Brewers Fayre restaurants across Britain for good, 87 of the sites will be converted into extra Premier Inn hotel rooms while the other 110 will be sold off over the next two years, the move is part of a ruthless five-year plan to slash £250 million in costs and cut around 3,800 jobs which is 12% of the workforce, Whitbread blames huge rises in business rates and National Insurance contributions plus changing guest habits that now prefer simple hotel food and drink offers, CEO Dominic Paul said the branded restaurants no longer make sense and the overhaul will turn Whitbread into a higher-margin pure-play hotel business, the much-loved chains that have been around since the 1970s and 1980s will effectively disappear as the company focuses purely on Premier Inn rooms and revenue, Well done Labour..

A minimum wage of £15 would end my coffee shop, it would have to close, as would many other businesses. I’ll explain for the economically illiterate. Staff costs are currently half our costs, a £15 minimum wage is actually more than £15 an hour for the company, because you have to add: - 12.07% holiday - Sick pay - Maternity pay if and when required - National insurance - Pension contributions These costs would mean the shop loses money because remember, energy costs are up, rates are up, regulations are up. Now you can pass these costs onto the consumer - that would mean charging a lot more for coffee, people won’t pay it. The likes of Starbucks and Costa can, because they have economies of scale. The independent doesn’t. Now the little socialist will say well this is your fault, if you can’t run a business that can afford to pay its staff properly, but the little socialist has never run a business and does not understand the dynamics. Now I could pay some staff off and fill those hours myself or reduce us to one staff member during certain periods - but this proves the point that a minimum wage costs jobs. There was a time when these jobs were done by kids, perhaps on the weekend, paid a lower wage, no holiday and no silly employment rights. Perhaps they were even paid cash. The dynamic worked and small businesses like this could operate. It was also a great first job. Sadly now it isn’t worth employing entitlement youngsters at this level of pay. So alas, I don’t need the stress, the business would close, a number of jobs would be lost. Economics is about understanding these dynamics, no vibes. The cost of living is not solved through passing on inflation to the business, it is solved by ending high inflation and creating prosperity. This is what socialists don’t understand, they can’t create prosperity, they can only destroy it.