We've looked at Cafe Rouge very closely, it has been a disappointing performer.

David Thomas, Whitbread chief executive

While its Costa Coffee and Pizza Hut chains saw healthy growth, sales in its high street restaurants, including Cafe Rouge, Bella Pasta and TGI Friday's all fell sharply in the six months to 2 September.

That contibuted to Whitbread reporting a 5.9% drop in pre-tax profits to �182.1m during the period, while group sales slipped by 1.9% to �1.77bn.

The disposals announced on Tuesday will see 10% of the restaurants division - 140 outlets in total - put up for sale, although Whitbread said it wanted to sell the sites as going concerns rather than close them.

Beefeater 'destinations'

The Cafe Rouge chain will bear the brunt of the cuts with 35 of its 105 outlets put up for sale immediately.

"We've looked at Cafe Rouge very closely. It has been a disappointing performer and we've taken the decision to close some of the underperforming outlets," David Thomas, Whitbread's chief executive said.

The 70 remaining Cafe Rouge sites are currently delivering like-for-like sales growth of about 4% - still below Whitbread's target rate of 5%.

The company bought the Cafe Rouge chain from the Pelican Group three years ago.

The announcement is the conclusion of a review by Whitbread of its restaurants division.

There will also be an overhaul of the 258-strong Beefeater brand, creating a new concept called Out and Out at 80 sites.

These are described as large upmarket "destination" restaurants outside towns.

Costa growth

A further 90 Beefeaters will be turned into a "local eating" format, while up to 40 will remain as the existing Beefeater format and the remaining 50 or so closed.

The main expansion is planned for the Costa Coffee brand, which will grow from 220 sites to 500, with the creation of 1,000 jobs.

This growth includes a number of proposed Costa coffee bars inside bank branches of Abbey National.

The group's Brewsters family restaurant brand will be doubled, expanding to 220 sites.

Whitbread said about 90% of its operating profit for the restaurants division was generated by Brewers Fayre and Beefeater.

Costa Coffee like-for-like sales were ahead by 9.4% and Pizza Hut saw 5.2% growth.

Pubs interest

Sales at Cafe Rouge and Bella Pasta were down by 0.9% and TGI Friday's sales slipped by 6.1%.

The group's hotels division, which includes the Marriott and Travel Inn brands, saw like-for-likes sales increase by 9.8%, with sales helped by the acquisition of the Swallow hotels group for �578m in January.

Whitbread said it had received "genuine levels of interest" from both trade buyers and venture capitalists since then, although it was too soon to be identifying possible bidders.

Whitbread intends to concentrate on its hotel, restaurant and sport club chains.

Chairman Sir John Banham said: "The divisions that comprise 'Future Whitbread' have continued to grow their sales and profits and achieved like-for-like sales growth of 3.8% in the period - a good performance in the current UK retail environment."

Shareholders will pick up an interim dividend of 8.05p, a 5.2% increase on last time.