All-you-can eat Brewers Fayre to be rolled out

Whitbread plans to rollout the all-you-can eat offer to more of its Brewers Fayre estate after a successful trial.

The group has been running the concept "Buffet Place" at its Paper Mill pub in High Wycombe for a couple of months.

Now, the operator thinks it has the offer at the right standard to expand upon its original plan of eight sites.

When asked if the company would do more of the buffet style restaurants for the brand, Alan Parker, Whitbread's chief executive, said: "Absolutely, it has been a great success story for us. Peter [Blake, Whitbread's Brewers Fayre operations director] has done a great job with the brand.

"This is a brand that two years ago people said was dead in the water - and now look at it."

But Parker ruled out Whitbread being tempted back to the market, following the increase in M&A in the latter part of the summer.

He said: "Growth among our pub restaurants will be organic. One can never say never of course, but organic is the route we will take.

"Or, if it were a deal similar to the Coffeheaven one earlier this year, then we would be tempted by that kind of bolt-on acquisition."

The move to add an all-you-can-eat offer to Brewers Fayre comes after Whitbread decided to put Taybarns expansion on hold. It had been thought that conversion costs to the Taybarns format had proved to be prohibitive.