BRITAIN’S largest hospitality company — owner of Costa Coffee and Premier Inn — and one of the largest employers threatened yesterday to push up prices under the rebranded minimum wage.

Whitbread, which employs more than 45,000 staff, warned it faces a “substantial” hit from next year’s introduction of a £7.20 an hour so-called living wage.

The transnational, which also owns restaurant brands Beefeater, Brewers Fayre, Table Table and Taybarns, said it was already working on plans to offset the extra wage costs.

These will include “selective” price increases, as well as action to improve productivity and make general savings across the business, according to the group.

It will confirm more details on October 20, when it reports half-year financial results.

Whitbread is the latest in a succession of major firms to claim that the “living wage,” announced by Chancellor George Osborne in his summer Budget, would have negative effects.

From next April, employers will have to pay all workers aged over 25 at least £7.20 an hour, up from the current national minimum wage of £6.50.

Whitbread reported slowing sales growth over the summer and said trading was weaker than expected last month.

However, the group’s latest trading figures showed Premier Inn like-for-like sales rose 4.3 per cent in the second quarter of the financial year, while Costa saw a 4 per cent increase and sales edged 0.6 per cent higher across its restaurant brands.

Group-wide sales over the first half-year rose 3.9 per cent on a like-for-like basis.

And, despite its apparent alarm at rising wage costs, Whitbread has courted controversy in the past over its bumper pay deals for bosses.

Outgoing chief executive Andy Harrison saw his potential pay package soar to £6.8 million in the 2013-14 financial year after cashing in a multimillion-pound share award made as part of a “golden hello” when he joined the company in 2010.

In the last financial year, he picked up £4.6m in pay and bonuses.

Even with this and other long-term share awards stripped out, his pay rose by 4.9 per cent in 2014-15, compared with 3.2 per cent for Whitbread’s employees in general.

Mr Harrison is retiring in December, to be replaced by Lloyds Banking Group retail boss Alison Brittain on a base salary of £775,000.