Format
6 x 60'
Production company
72 Films
Year of production
2022
Commissioning channels
C4
Availability
20/09/2022
Jo Brand narrates this behind the scenes look at Britain’s biggest snack rivalries. Talking to the inventors of some of the industry’s most well loved household names in ice cream, burgers, sweets,
cereals, sandwiches and Christmas chocolate, industry heavyweights, and the brains behind the
brands, reveal what it takes to hit a nation’s sweet, or savoury, spot.
Contact us for further information and screener.
Found in freezers across the country, ice-cream is enjoyed in a cone, on a stick or simply with a tub and spoon. Originating from a butcher who wanted to increase his sales during the summer, ice-cream quickly took to the hearts of the nation and nowadays the average person consumes 9 litres of ice-cream every year.
Throughout the middle of the 20th century ice-cream lovers had two options: Wall’s, or Lyons Maid. These two industry giants competed head-to-head, each vying for the majority of the
market. With its imaginative creations like the Cornetto and visually pleasing Viennetta, Wall’s comfortably took the lead. Sitting proudly at the top of market, Wall’s didn’t see what was coming.
1989 – Day Zero for ice-cream. Whilst Wall’s was standing sleeping, Mars and Haagen-Dazs saw a gap in the market and launched their ice-creams, and they were a step-up in quality. Wall’s had to fight
back, and so the Magnum was released. With the ice-cream market worth £1.3 billion in the UK, companies are fighting for their share. Will the latest trend, calorie conscious tubs, be able to battle
for a place?
From European migrants arriving in New York on the Hamburg sail route, to cowboys grazing cattle in the newly industrialised Wild West, rapid technological innovation and a litany of lawsuits, the humble hamburger owes its origins to The American Dream. How did this All-American import seduce its way into the British stomach to a point where we consume 2.5 billion beef burgers a
year?
Sweets are ubiquitous and enduring; they cross age, culture and gender boundaries. This film tells the story of the sweet business from its humble beginnings to a billion-pound industry. It explores the people’s favourites, past and present. While the story of sweets is filled with colour and joy, there is also a dark side. Sugar escaped moral censure until late in the 20th century, when doctors began to worry about the results of eating – or over- eating - a food so high in calories and low in nutrients, and, thanks to new techniques in
food processing, omnipresent on supermarket shelves. The sweet companies fought back, with clever marketing techniques and recipe tweaks. The parents were fooled, and the children were happy.
This is also the story of how one brand in particular was able to cut through the stuffy English sweet market and become the biggest player in the industry. Haribo, the 90s new kid on the block
that no one saw coming.
With an incredible cache of nostalgic archive, exciting revelations of corporate espionage and tell-all interviews, this is the story of how the biggest players in the sweet industry made it to the top.
In Britain, we consume 4 billion sandwiches a year. Sandwiches are the engine of the £20 billion food ‘to-go’ industry, which is the largest and most advanced in Europe. How did we go from the lack
lustre British Rail sandwiches that came to represent the worst of British food, to the sophisticated, flavourful fare worth billions of pounds.
This is a story about what it means to be healthy. From the birth of the very first flake the cereal industry has been telling us how to keep in good shape. (and changing their tune as they go along)
Over the decades, the best way to start the day changed beyond recognition into unfathomable ideas of what was wholesome and nutritious. But a century after the invention of cereal, we’ve come
full circle and going back to aspirations of the original pioneer John Harvey Kellogg- good, untampered natural ingredients.
