Free Wifi to be available to guests across 1,600 restaurants and pubs
Mitchells & Butlers today announces a three year deal with O2 to deliver Wifi into its 1,600 restaurants and pubs in the UK.
Robin Young, Operations Director at Mitchells & Butlers said: "Everyday in each of our businesses my teams provide great guest experiences and the availability of free Wifi will give us a further opportunity to enhance this. We already know that people love to eat and drink with us and whether guests visit to relax over breakfast, brunch or dinner, work away from the office, or have a beer with friends and colleagues, we know from talking to them that free and easy to use Wifi is something they want in the restaurant and pub environment."
With its market-changing public platform, O2 Wifi, this deal will see O2 Wifi hotspots roll out to Mitchells & Butlers' UK restaurants and pubs across all Brands. Guests at Harvester, Toby Carvery, Vintage Inns, Nicholson's, Browns, All Bar One and O'Neill's will have access to free Wifi no matter which mobile or broadband provider they are with. O2's Wifi is designed to address the many shortcomings of current public Wifi offerings by being fast, genuinely free to customers, reliable and simple-to-use.
The first hotspots will be introduced to 199 Harvester restaurants and once rollout across the group is completed by October this year, the service will be available to accompany the 125 million meals and 425 million drinks Mitchells & Butlers' restaurants and pubs serve each year.
Gavin Franks, MD of O2 Wifi said: "Wifi should be about accessing the internet quickly, seamlessly and, most importantly, where people want to use it. That is why this partnership - with the leading operator of restaurants and pubs in the UK - is such an exciting one. Pub and restaurant-goers will soon be able to receive promotional offers, check the football scores, reply to their emails and update social media sites over a Sunday roast and a pint. Our business strategy is to show fresh thinking to enable new possibilities for our customers, and the hope is that users of O2 Wifi, be it in our partnered venues or through our outdoor hotspots, will now begin to enjoy the full, unrestrained potential of what Wifi as a technology can offer."
Robin Young adds: "Our three year technology journey is reaching that exciting stage where, following the deployment of a new flexible cloud-based infrastructure with our partner Fujitsu, we can start to deploy some really guest-focused services. Fantastic food and drink experiences can now be linked to integrated and personalised offers, true guest-recognition and reward. People visiting our restaurants and pubs will be able to choose whether to sit-back, relax and enjoy being looked-after, or to stay online and in-touch with their virtual friends or office.
"I have been particularly impressed with the approach O2 has taken in developing this relationship. Our joint customer-centric strategies, enabled by technology, will deliver exactly what is needed in this market."
- ENDS -
Notes to editors
For further information please contact;
Andrew Roache, external communications manager, Mitchells & Butlers
Tel: 0121 498 4158
About Mitchells & Butlers:
- Mitchells & Butlers is the leading operator of restaurants and pubs in the UK. Its leading portfolio of brands includes Harvester, Toby Carvery, Vintage Inns, Premium Country Dining Group, Crown Carveries, Sizzling Pubs, Browns, Miller & Carter, Metro Professionals, All Bar One, Nicholson's, O'Neill's and Ember Inns.
- The Company serves around 125 million meals and 425 million drinks each year and is one of the largest operators within the UK's £70 billion eating and drinking-out market.
- Further details are available at www.mbplc.com and photography is available to download at www.mbplc.com/imagelibrary.
About O2
- Telefónica UK Limited is a leading communications company for consumers and businesses in the UK, with 23 million mobile, fixed line and broadband customers as at 31 December 2011.
- Telefónica UK Limited is part of Telefónica Europe plc, a business division of Telefónica S.A. which uses O2 as its commercial brand in the UK, Ireland, Slovakia, Germany and the Czech Republic, and has 58.1 million customers across these markets.
- Telefónica UK employs around 11,000 people in the UK and has 450 retail stores.
- O2 is the naming rights partner of The O2, the world-class entertainment venue.
- O2's UK 2G mobile network provides voice and data services which are available to 99% of the UK's population.
- O2's UK 3G (HSPA+ 900 / 2100 MHz) network currently provides voice and high speed data services of up to 14.4Mbps - 21Mbps in major cities - which are available to over 84% of the UK population.
- O2 was the first UK operator to deploy a 4G/LTE trial network which has demonstrated peak speeds of over 100Mbps to a mobile device.
- Telefónica Europe also owns 50% of Tesco Mobile, which operates in the UK and Ireland, and 50% of Tchibo Mobilfunk in Germany.
- For further press information about O2 go to www.o2.co.uk/news