Paignton Beefeater closes its doors for good as part of nationwide shutdown

The White Rock Beefeater on Brixham Road in Paignton closes its doors for good today, as part of the nationwide shutdown of every remaining Beefeater restaurant in the UK.

The closure marks the end of the road for a familiar fixture of family dining in Torbay, as parent company Whitbread confirmed in July that all 106 of its remaining Beefeater sites, including the Paignton branch, would cease trading permanently on Thursday, September 10 2026.

It is not clear exactly when the White Rock branch itself first opened, though the wider Beefeater brand has existed since 1974. The site is understood locally to have been built around 2014, on the former site of a nightclub.

The Paignton site remains on the market for sale, with a freehold asking price of £785,000, listed by commercial property agent Christie & Co. The listing covers the site at Long Road South, White Rock, Paignton, TQ4 7RZ, and includes the freehold building itself rather than the restaurant's trading business, which ceases today regardless of any future sale.

What happens to the building next, whether it continues under new ownership as a restaurant or is converted to another use, remains to be seen.

Today's closure is part of a much wider retreat by Whitbread from the branded restaurant sector nationally. Sister chains Brewers Fayre and Bar + Block are closing alongside Beefeater, as the hospitality group narrows its focus entirely to its hotel operations.

Whitbread first signalled the move in April, announcing plans to exit its remaining branded restaurant estate as part of a wider restructuring drive aimed at cutting annual costs by £250 million.

The company confirmed the exact closure date to customers two months later, in a letter sent to members of its loyalty scheme, telling them plainly that "on Thursday 10 September 2026 your local Beefeater and all other UK Beefeaters will close." Around 3,800 jobs are expected to be affected across the group as a result of the wider restructuring.

Behind the decision, Whitbread has pointed to rising employer National Insurance contributions and business rates, which it says have made the traditional pub-restaurant model increasingly difficult to sustain. The company intends to focus instead on its Premier Inn hotel business, which it has described as significantly more profitable than its restaurant operations.

Some former restaurant sites elsewhere in the country will be converted into smaller kitchens serving hotel guests only, rather than continuing as standalone restaurants open to the public. Others that don't fit the company's hotel expansion plans will be sold off or leased out as going concerns, a route which appears to reflect the Paignton site's current position on the market.

Not every site nationally is disappearing without a buyer. In August, hospitality group Queensway confirmed it would acquire 53 former Brewers Fayre and Beefeater sites from Whitbread. At the time, Queensway did not confirm what the sites would be rebranded as, what pricing customers could expect, or when any of the acquired sites might reopen to the public.

The Paignton site is not among those included in that deal.

Beefeater was founded by Whitbread in 1974, and for decades became a familiar fixture of British family dining, known for its steakhouse menu and roadside locations often paired with Premier Inn hotels, much like the White Rock site, which sits alongside a 97-room Premier Inn.

The brand expanded significantly in 1995, when Whitbread bought and rebranded the rival Berni Inn chain, adding around 115 sites to the Beefeater estate overnight. By the late 1990s, the chain had grown to more than 250 locations, becoming Whitbread's flagship restaurant brand alongside Brewers Fayre.

For Paignton, that decades-long presence on the high street comes to an end today, as one more familiar name disappears from the town's dining scene.