The Plaice to Know

CollectionsCorporate HQs & household names

Where the Brands Live

Tupperware, Heinz, Nando's and friends. The show is forever explaining how some everyday product came to be — so here are the companies, pinned to the places they call home.

24 places in this collection

  1. 1
    Pizza HutUnited States

    He invented it in the 1980s and Pizza Hut stole it.

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  2. 2
    Royal MailUnited Kingdom

    People who work at the Royal Mail say one of the serious problems they have — the sorters who have to sort through the envelopes — is that people don't seal their envelopes.

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  3. 3
    FordUnited States

    I was on Ford's website, and they said that there are 3.4 million vans in the UK, and they travel a total of 63 billion miles during 2014.

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  4. 4
    British AirwaysUnited Kingdom

    British Airways in 2014 released a little thing called Sound Bites, so the idea would be that the food that you ordered on the plane, you could go into the system, your little entertainment system, and you…

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  5. 5
    TupperwareUnited States

    In 1957, she had held a massive Tupperware party on a Florida island for 1,200 people, and there was a torrential thunderstorm which injured 21 people, and that led to lots of lawsuits.

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  6. 6
    Google EarthUnited States

    When they were doing a Google Earth survey of it, they discovered a missing bit of the wall, and they discovered a local village nearby who had just obviously come across this wall and gone, well, no one seems…

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  7. 7
    Big MacUnited States

    One Big Mac cost 3.75 rubles, and a monthly wage was 150 rubles — that is the equivalent today of a Big Mac costing 52 pounds 78 pence.

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  8. 8
    NandoUnited Kingdom

    There was a terrific piece in the Guardian recently about Nando's collection of modern South African art.

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  9. 9
    HeinzUnited States

    During World War II, Heinz developed a self-heating can of soup.

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  10. 10
    De BeersUnited Kingdom

    De Beers use a giant vacuum cleaner to get diamonds from the bottom of the sea.

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  11. 11
    St. James'sUnited Kingdom

    The first bowler hats were sold at St James's Street at Locke and Co-Hatters, who've been going since basically the 17th century when they were founded.

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  12. 12
    JaguarUnited Kingdom

    During the Monaco Grand Prix in 2004, when Oceans 12 came out, they did a publicity stunt where the Jaguar cars in the race were fitted with a new nose cone, each of which had a diamond worth in excess of…

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  13. 13
    KelloggUnited States

    Kellogg's Corn Flakes and Kellogg's Company was founded, invented and named after his brother.

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  14. 14
    WalmartUnited States

    The Chinese branch of Walmart had to recall a bunch of five spice donkey meat products in 2014, but that was because they tested them and they were full of fox DNA, which is not a delicacy.

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  15. 15
    Marks & SpencerUnited Kingdom

    The modern chicken kiev, with garlic in, was probably invented by a woman called Cathy Chapman in 1979, who was working for Marks and Spencer.

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  16. 16
    NokiaFinland

    There was a Nokia executive in 2002 who was fined 116,000 euros for going at about 40 miles an hour in a 30 mile an hour speed limit.

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  17. 17
    ChanelFrance

    The first advert to be shown on Channel 5 was for Chanel number 5.

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  18. 18
    Red BullAustria

    Red Bull got sued in 2014 for the fact that they don't actually give you wings.

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  19. 19
    KodakUnited States

    Starting decades ago, Kodak had an interest in neutrons, subatomic particles that can be used to determine the makeup of a given material or create an image of it without damaging it.

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  20. 20
    Princeton Consumer ResearchUnited Kingdom

    There's a man called Barry Druitt who genuinely works for a firm called Princeton Consumer Research, and he's spent 20 years smelling armpits.

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  21. 21
    FerrariItaly

    He was really annoyed with how the clutch worked in one of his Ferraris, and when he pointed it out, the sales team were just really bad with him.

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  22. 22
    CanvaAustralia

    Canva and particularly Canva for Teams is a design platform that makes it so easy for you to create visual content in any format.

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  23. 23
    General MotorsUnited States

    General Motors make artificial stalactites out of their car byproducts for bats to cling on to.

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  24. 24
    Quaker OatsUnited States

    Quaker Oats used corn cobs at the time to get a particular chemical.

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