The brand positioning and advertising for Beefeater Grill, Brewers Fayre and Table Table is under review, led by David Murdin, Whitbread's restaurant marketing director.
The company recently appointed agency Bartle Bogle Hegarty Milton Keynes to carry out the repositioning, aimed at boosting sales by appealing to younger consumers.
Over the past year, Whitbread has focused on building its budget hotel brand Premier Inn and chain of Costa Coffee shops.
While the two brands helped to lift Whitbread's underlying profits by 15.2% to £174.9m in the six months to 1 September, the restaurant division's like-for-like sales fell by 1.6%.
Murdin said that the "same level of rigour, when applied to our restaurant business, should deliver the same output".
Murdin is keen to position the restaurants as a portfolio of stand-alone brands, to avoid consumers perceiving them as a group of restaurants. He also plans to run national campaigns, in a shift away from the chains' locally targeted work.
The restaurants target retired consumers over the age of 60, who enjoy eating out during the day. Murdin is keen to retain this lucrative market, while broadening the brands to resonate with a younger audience too.
He said that good food and cookery had become part of the UK's popular culture in recent years, citing the proliferation of TV cookery shows and celebrity chefs, which had made the public "excited (about) and engaged with" the food industry.
He said: "We see this as an opportunity to create stronger, more compelling brands."
Murdin added that he was aware that Whitbread would have to "adjust" the look and feel of the restaurants to draw in a younger audience, and that it needed to create a clearer brand proposition.
He admitted: "At the moment, there isn't anything in our restaurant business that dictates what our brand is and what it stands for."
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