Toast - Woolworths

Sliced Bread

BBC

Health & Fitness

4.6 • 634 Ratings

🗓️ 5 June 2025

⏱️ 28 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

Woolworths was once a family favourite with well over 1,000 UK stores selling everything from kitchenware to pick and mix. So, why did the business collapse when other general retailers were on the rise?

The BBC Business journalist, Sean Farrington, charts the company's highs and lows before asking 'what went wrong at Woolies?'.

Alongside him is the entrepreneur, Sam White, who at the end of the show has to reach her own conclusions, based only on what she has heard and her own business acumen.

Sean and Sam hear from expert guests including:

- Richard Hawkins - an honorary research fellow at the University of Wolverhampton and president of the marketing history organisation, Charm, who has written about the company?s early days

- Clare Bailey - a retail consultant who was employed by Woolworths

- Claire Robertson - whose retail career began with a Saturday job at her local Woolies and led to her running a spin-off business (called 'Wellworths') after the original failed.

- Tony Page - Commercial and Marketing Director at Woolworths from 2006 who tried to save the business after it went into administration

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

You can email the programme at [email protected]

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

Transcript

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0:00.0	Hello, podcast fan.
0:03.0	Consider this your invite to the UK's biggest podcasting party.
0:06.7	We're heading to Sheffield from the 4th to the 6th of July
0:09.0	for the BBC Sounds Fringe at the Crossed Wires Festival.
0:12.8	We'll be joined by some of the biggest names in podcasting,
0:15.3	including Sarah Cox, Charlie Hedges, Russell Kane,
0:18.4	and some bloke called Greg James doing his radio four show called Rewinder.
0:23.2	You can watch live shows of your favourite podcasts, and the best part is free.
0:28.0	To book your free tickets, go to crossedwires.org slash fringe.
0:34.2	BBC Sounds, music, radio, podcasts.
0:40.3	You're about to listen to the latest series of Toast.
0:44.0	Episodes will be released weekly wherever you get your podcasts.
0:50.8	But if you're in the UK, you can listen to the latest episode seven days earlier than anywhere else, first on BBC Sounds.
0:59.2	Hello and welcome back to another new series of Toast, the show from BBC Radio 4, where we look at amazing businesses that offered a lot to customers, but still somehow, managed
1:05.1	to end up toast.
1:08.2	I'm Sean Farrington, a BBC business journalist, your toast host, in the company of our resident business expert, Sam White.
1:15.3	Sam has no idea what's coming, so all her reactions are fresh, off the cuff, authentic, and at the end, she has to give us her professional opinion on why this business is no longer gracing our high streets.
1:26.8	And I've a feeling the one we're looking at today is going to be remembered by everyone.
1:34.0	Sam, hello.
1:35.4	Hey, how are you?
1:37.0	I am good.
1:37.9	I'm going to be amazed if you haven't darkened the doors of this high street chain that we're talking about today.
	...

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