Whitbread plc is a multinational British hotel and restaurant company headquartered in Houghton Regis, England. The business was founded as a brewery in 1742, and had become the largest brewery in the world by the 1780s. Its largest division is currently Premier Inn, which is the largest hotel brand in the UK with over 785 hotels and 72,000 rooms. Until January 2019 it owned Costa Coffee but sold it to The Coca-Cola Company. Whitbread's brands include the restaurant chains Beefeater, Brewers Fayre and Table Table. Whitbread is listed on the London Stock Exchange and is a constituent of the FTSE 100 Index. History Origins The business was formed in 1742 when Samuel Whitbread formed a partnership with Godfrey and Thomas Shewell and acquired a small brewery at the junction of Old Street and Upper Whitecross Street and another brewhouse for pale and amber beers in Brick Lane, Spitalfields. Godfrey Shewell withdrew from the partnership as Thomas Shewell and Samuel Whitbread bought the large site of the derelict King's Head brewery in Chiswell Street in 1750. The new brewery was for the specific production of porter, and was renamed the Hind Brewery after the Whitbread family coat of arms. While not the first to discover Porter production, Whitbread was the first to exploit it commercially on a large scale. This coincided with an increase in beer consumption in the UK, following regulations to limit the sale of gin owing to the excesses of the Gin Craze. By 1758 production at Chiswell street was 65,000 barrels and the firm had become the largest firm of Porter brewers in the UK. From the outset, Whitbread was the leading financial partner, and solely responsible for management, and in 1761, Whitbread acquired Shewell's share of the business for £30,000. By the 1780s Whitbread had become the largest brewery in the world. In 1796 the company produced 202,000 barrels of porter. The firm struggled after the death of Samuel Whitbread Sr, and saw ownership transfer to his son, also called Samuel Whitbread. The company adopted the name Whitbread & Co Ltd in 1799. By the 1810s, Samuel Whitbread Jnr had brought in several new investment partners including his cousin Jacob Whitbread and the Master Brewer John Martineau (four of his descendants would later sit on the board of Whitbread, including John Edmund Martineau). In 1812, the company merged with the Martineau Brewery holdings and by 1816,