Strategic approach

Vision

We will grow legendary brands by building a strong customer heartbeat and innovating to stay ahead.

Our winning teams make everyday experiences special for customers so they come back time and again, driving profitable growth.  Good Together helps us be a force for good in our communities.

Our strategy is to create substantial sustainable value for our shareholders, by building strong brands based on consistently delivering a great customer experience.  Internally we refer to this under the heading of ‘Success to Legend’. This is because a successful company becomes a legend by delivering outstanding results for all its stakeholders decade after decade.

In the UK we already have strong brands in Premier Inn and Costa and we intend to continue to expand those brands into selected attractive international markets.  Strong brands are built on a strong customer heartbeat and it is vital that we continue to provide a superior experience for every one of the 20 million customers a month who visit one of our brands.

We will achieve this by motivating our 40,000 team members to provide consistently high levels of customer service and maintaining high levels of team engagement is key to that aim.

As well as providing our customers with the quality of service that will delight them, we must also ensure that the environments we provide for them, and for our teams, are well-maintained, clean and welcoming. It is important therefore that we continue to re-invest in the quality of our estate.

We intend to create substantial value for our shareholders by delivering on our five-year growth milestones and by increasing return on capital. This is why ROCE is, subject to shareholder approval, being introduced as a central measure in a revised long-term incentive scheme for senior management.

An integral part of our approach is the Good Together programme. We want Whitbread to be a force for good in all the communities in which we operate. Good Together encompasses a range of corporate responsibility activities including training to enrich the lives of our team members, improving the nutritional content of the food we serve to aid the well-being of our customers and a reduction in energy consumption, which saves the Company money as well as having a positive impact on the environment.

The customer heartbeat schematic

The schematic at the top of the page illustrates our strategic approach. The following sections describe each of the three key elements of our philosophy and explain how we have performed in those areas in 2011/12.

The WINcard

The WINcard is our balanced scorecard and contains our key performance indicators. It is used throughout the Company and measures our performance in each of the key strategic areas. It also reinforces the customer heartbeat schematic.

The WINcard results for 2011/12 can be seen in the following sections. These results have a direct link to remuneration and information about how the executive directors are rewarded for WINcard performance can be found in the remuneration section.

In general, a green WINcard score is achieved where performance is better than both target and the prior year performance. An amber score is for performance better than the prior year but below target and a red score is for a result worse than the prior year. Targets are set for each measure at the start of the year.