Alison Brittain to step down as chief executive of Whitbread

Whitbread has announced that Domino's Pizza boss Dominic Paul is to take over as its next chief executive, with Alison Brittain set to step down after seven years.

Paul will join the company, which owns the Premier Inn chain, in early January 2023 while Brittain will retire from a full-time executive role at the end of the 2023 financial year.

As chief executive of Domino's Paul led the business through the pandemic and oversaw a period of sales growth.

He is well-known by Whitbread, having previously been a member of its executive committee and managing director of Costa Coffee for three years.

Whitbread said Paul's appointment followed an "extensive search" for Brittain's replacement to lead the company, which also owns brands including the Beefeater restaurant chain.

Adam Crozier, chairman of Whitbread, paid tribute to Brittain's leadership. He said: "She has guided the company brilliantly over that time: developing and then selling Costa for £3.9b, growing and innovating our award-winning UK customer proposition, firmly establishing Germany to be a substantial engine of future growth, and latterly ably steering the Group and leading our 35,000 colleagues through the pandemic.

"The strong recovery under Alison's leadership leaves Whitbread very well positioned as a strategic winner in the industry."

Brittain said it had been an "enormous privilege" to lead Whitbread and that the business had recovered from the pandemic "well ahead of expectations".

She added: "For the last seven years I have been consistently impressed and humbled by the hard work and commitment of our very talented teams and their passion for providing brilliant experiences for our guests every day and I'm immensely grateful to them for everything that they do.

"I will continue to be fully committed to the business over the next few months until it's time to hand over the baton and I wish Dominic and the whole Whitbread team every success for the future."