Sliced Bread

Sliced Bread is back!

Greg Foot returns to investigate a whole new batch of so-called wonder products suggested by you, the listeners.Sliced Bread is back for a new series from Thursday 28 September, 2023 on BBC Radio 4 and BBC Sounds, with new episodes available weekly on Thursdays on BBC Sounds and wherever you get your podcasts.

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 on 9 May, 2024. 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.