Toast

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Sliced Bread Presents: Toast - Little Chef

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Toast - Little Chef

Sliced Bread

BBC Radio 4 - Sliced Bread, Toast - Little Chef

Why did we lose the roadside restaurant chain Little Chef?

Why did we lose the roadside restaurant chain Little Chef? Sean Farrington examines its rise and fall with help from expert guests.

Why did the restaurant chain, Little Chef, disappear from our roadsides? 

Sean Farrington discovers what happened to the brand which brought us Jubilee Pancakes, Olympic Breakfasts and free lollies for the kids. 

At its peak, Little Chef had over 400 restaurants on most of our major highways and a turnover well in excess of £100m. 

So, how did such a successful business ultimately end up toast? 

Sean speaks to Fiona Alper who was married to the Little Chef co-founder, Sam Alper; the entrepreneur, Lawrence Wosskow, who once owned Little Chef and Becky Parr-Phillips who started as a waitress but rose through the ranks to become Little Chef's head of operations. 

Alongside them all to analyse Little Chef's fortunes is the self-made millionaire and serial entrepreneur, Sam White. 

Produced by Jon Douglas. Toast is a BBC Audio North production for Radio 4 and BBC Sounds. 

You can email the programme at toast@bbc.co.uk

Feel free to suggest topics which could be covered in future episodes. 

Sliced Bread returns for a new batch of investigations in May. In the new series, Greg Foot will investigate more of the latest so-called wonder products to find out whether they really are the best thing since sliced bread. In the meantime, Toast is available in the Sliced Bread feed on BBC Sounds.

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While Sliced Bread takes a break, we serve up... Toast.

While Sliced Bread takes a break, we serve up... Toast. Sean Farrington examines the spectacular failures of wonder products and businesses which had promised so much.

While Sliced Bread takes a break we serve up... Toast. A study of the spectacular failures of brands which had promised so much to consumers.    

In each episode, the presenter and BBC business journalist, Sean Farrington, examines one big idea. What did it promise? Why did people back it? Why did they get burnt?  

Some of the world's most successful businesses have also brought us some of the world's most remarkable failures. So, what led them to be toast? And what can we learn from their stories today? 

Sean unpicks all the early optimism, hype and ambition. He learns about the tremendous success of a brand before hearing how it faltered, with help from expert commentators and people who were directly involved. How do they view things now and what, if anything, could have been done differently? 

The self-made millionaire and serial entrepreneur, Sam White, is alongside him, analysing the missteps that changed a brand's fortunes and reaching her own, often instructive, conclusions.  

From big tech to high street retail and, of course, food, Toast tackles the business ideas that, one way or another, ended up cooked. 

Sliced Bread returns for a new batch of investigations in February. In the new series, Greg Foot will investigate more of the latest so-called wonder products to find out whether they really are the best thing since sliced bread. In the meantime, Toast is available in the Sliced Bread feed on BBC Sounds.

Toast is a BBC Audio North production for BBC Radio 4.

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