Toast - Jamie's Italian
What went wrong at Jamie Oliver's UK restaurant chain, Jamie's Italian?
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 it fail? What can we learn from it today?
In this episode, which was first broadcast in February 2024, Sean and the serial entrepreneur, Sam White, examine the fortunes of Jamie Oliver's Italian restaurant chain. It was a big hit when it launched so why couldn't it maintain that success?
Expert commentators - and Jamie Oliver himself - reflect on what made his restaurants so special and what led to their demise.
Tracey MacLeod, formerly of The Independent, was one of the first restaurant critics through the door; Emma Lake, Assistant Editor at The Caterer magazine wrote extensively about Jamie's Italian; Peter Harden, the co-founder of Harden's Restaurant Guide, has trawled through reviews of Jamie's Italian to see what changed from the customers' perspective.
Jamie Oliver's perspective comes through an interview he did with Kirsty Young for the Radio 4 series 'Young Again'.
If you have an idea for a topic with a toast moment then you can email the programme at [email protected]
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 produced by Jon Douglas and Viant Siddique and is a BBC Audio North production for Radio 4 and BBC Sounds.
Sliced Bread
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 3 July, 2025. 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. For this brand new series of Toast, episodes will be released weekly on Thursdays wherever you get your podcasts. But if you’re in the UK, you can listen to the latest episode on BBC Sounds first, a week earlier than anywhere else.
Toast is a BBC Audio North production for BBC Radio 4.
- No. of episodes: 159
- Latest episode: 2025-06-12
- Health & Fitness Science
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