The Restaurant Group (TRG), which owns Frankie & Benny's and Chiquito, says it has plans to turn the business around after revealing disappointing figures.

The company says it faced "a challenging trading year" after announcing a loss before tax of £39.5million for the 53 weeks ending January 1, 2017.

This was compared to a profit before tax of £86.8million in 2015. Like for like sales were down 3.9 per cent.

TRG operates 488 restaurants and pub restaurants throughout the UK. It employs 15,000 people but is expected to cuts jobs and make £10 million of cost savings in 2019.

Andy McCue, chief executive officer, commented: "Having completed the strategic reviews of our brands, we are now pursuing a new and focused plan to turnaround and grow the business.

"TRG has significant scale advantages, a diverse portfolio of brands with strong brand awareness and is highly cash generative.

" However, there is much to change in our Leisure businesses to provide customers with better value and an improved experience while, at the same time, ensuring we continue to grow our pubs and concessions businesses. It will take time to effect the scale of change required and for customers to respond but I'm proud of how our colleagues are rising to the challenge."

TRG says there are four key elements to turning the business around:

*Re-establishing the competitiveness of the leisure brand

*Serving customers better and more efficiently

*Growing the pubs and concessions business

*Building a leaner, faster and more focused organisation.