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Private Notes
Since the coffee shop brands took off in the 1990s people have embraced their caffeinated delights. Once a nation of tea drinkers, people have fallen for the super-sized cups, adopted the language of lattes and are even prepared to pay upwards of £2.20 for a caffeine hit. Not even the recession quenched our desire for coffee and now millions are hooked, spending up to £2,000 a year and pouring cash into the coffers of the coffee shop brands. This sets out to discover how the nation became so obsessed, and how the brands do battle for our custom. With behind-the-scenes access to staff on the frontline and the bosses of the big brands, this is the inside story of the coffee shop world. First in a four-part series on businesses that have boomed despite tough economic times.
The second documentary in the Business Boomers series discovers why Britain came to have the biggest self-storage industry in Europe, when just three decades ago the industry didn't even exist in this country. This is the entertaining tale of canny entrepreneurs who grew rich selling empty space, of the garish multicoloured monster sheds that have sprung up around our towns and cities and - above all - of our national predilection for buying stuff and hoarding it. Self-storage has also provided a home for a multitude of small business start-ups as firms abandon the high street. Featuring self-storage bosses, compulsive collectors and observers including Professor Danny Dorling.
This episode follows the fortunes of the ultimate online retail success story - a business that was born in a garage twenty years ago and grew into a 100 billion pound global giant. Along the way, the Amazon phenomenon has inspired, shaped - and sometimes squeezed - the rest of the retail sector, while revolutionising attitudes to online business and transforming the way people shop. British people now do more of their shopping online than any other nation and in 2013, tens of millions of British customers used Amazon to buy 4.5 billion pounds' worth of goods. The story of the growing use of Amazon is the story of the internet age. Time and again, founder Jeff Bezos has moved the goalposts for many industries. Publishers, retailers and even the French minister of culture criticise Amazon's practices and bemoan its sheer size, but Amazon defends its record for providing customers with choice and competitive prices. Furthermore, Bezos' confidence in his mantra of 'start with the customer and work backwards' is already taking Amazon into new sectors - groceries, ebooks, film production, and cloud computing services
With new homes being built at the fastest rate for a decade, business is booming again for Britain's house builders. Profits are up and sales are surging, as companies like Barratt, Persimmon and Taylor Wimpey tempt customers into the biggest purchase of their lives. With access to the lead players in the British house-building industry, Hot Property reveals the inner workings of this business and discovers why it is such a source of controversy and conflict. Exploring the all-important quest for land, the art of winning over the planners and the public, and the science of designing the ideal home for prospective buyers, this is the fascinating story of how house builders have shaped our landscape and our lives. Over the years, they have learned to be very choosy about where they build, and very cautious about only building as many houses as they can sell. From stand-offs with NIMBYs to run-ins with politicians, this is a business like no other.
