Companies you can't see ever going under.

[PollyPepper]

Yesterday DH and I got a McDonald's. What an absolute treat.

And I started wondering if McDonald's will ever go bust.

It seems so unlikely, though of course it is possible as with any other business.

Mcdonalsa are in 120 countries around the world and serve 68 million customers each day!!

I honestly think it could be exposed that they use human meat and people would still go there.

I suppose Amazon as well?

All it takes though is a better and bigger competitor to take them down, but at this stage I just don't see it ever happening.

AIBU?

WH Smith were being kept alive by their travel sector, airports, service stations and stations etc... high street losing revenue

Starbucks

@PegPeople

I love the speciality magazines, can't get them anywhere else. They've got great stationary,

Only decent place to buy books through lockdown and until Waterstones is open again.

Lastly, I just love the shop! Gives me pleasure to be in it.

One of the two big WH Smiths here has closed during lockdown, and the Disney shop too. (Never re-opening, I mean.)

I think M&S will survive due to the foodhall. I think they have an older customer base for things like clothes who maybe prefer shopping in-store, but even my mum in her 70s is now shopping online, so who knows.

WHSmith. Just because I worked for them for 5 years and it's an absolute mystery how they're still around now! Colleague referred to them as 'the cockroaches of the high st - you could have a nuclear bomb and Smiths would still be there afterwards asking if anyone wanted chocolate'

B&M/home bargains
IKEA

Plumbers' merchants. We'll always need toilets.

That's it basically.

Primark

@zukiecat have you ever been in a Magazine Heaven? If there's one near you it's well worth checking out, the one near me is huge and has every possible magazine you can think of, as well as a lovely cafe.

I reckon Toyota, Volkswagen and Hyundai will be around forever, gradually buying up all the other car manufacturers.

Tampax
Andrex
Durex
Dulux

And anything else that ends in a vowel and an X. Although not Lux soap which I think has gone.

I also wouldn't put money on Marks and Spencer still being here in 10 years' time.

Woolworths.

WH Smith. If they survived airport and CBD shut downs, they are officially the cockroach of retail - they will be here long after all of us are gone.

In a nuclear wasteland, there will be one solitary WH Smith and overpriced chocolate.

Ah, it's come to me. The City of London.
"They'll" never let it go under.

en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/City_of_London_Corporation

@Bluntpencil

WH Smith were being kept alive by their travel sector, airports, service stations and stations etc... high street losing revenue

The thing that hasn’t been mentioned about WHSmith is the amount of stores that now host post office counters. They must get a pretty sweet retainer deal for that - plus it brings in footfall they wouldn’t see otherwise.

I used to work at WHSmith when I was a teenager and I was shit hot at the half price chocolate sales :o I used to win prizes all the time for selling the most! I think my record was 54 in one day or something like that. It was quite a small store.

@HollyBollyBooBoo

Boots - now Debenhams have gone, HoF and John Lewis have scaled back where else will I go for a decent beauty hall!

My dad said to me once that he never understands how Boots keeps going, but I think they’ve done a good job of positioning themselves as health and beauty specialists - and crucially, they’ve got out of other sectors at the right time. When I was growing up, Boots was heavily into music, videos and videogames, but it must be 20 years since they got out of the media market; long before streaming, and even before DVD got properly started, never mind finished. They also started their optician business just at the right time - around the same time Vision Express were expanding, from memory. I expect Boots got in there first in a lot of shopping centres.

Apple amaze me with what they've done. They were on their knees in 1995. It was laughable to own Apple products and the financial and tech press had their obituary ready. No one back then would have believed what they'd become.

Marks and Spencer really need to up their game to survive their loyal clientele are starting to shop online and die we are tomorrows target market and I don't know many people my age who buy anything but food and underwear.

@PegPeople

WH Smiths!! I'm not conspiracy nut but they must have good dirt on someone because by all accounts they should have died a death decades ago. I know they have a good airport and train station presence and they are common in hospitals but I simply don't comprehend how they are still operating on the high street.

When the apocalypse comes I predict all that will be left is a McDonald's hamburger, roaches and bloody WH Smiths.

You aren't wrong, just how the hell do they keep going. Yes they have shops in airports, train stations and motorway services, but their high street shops are as bad as Steptoe's yard.

I think it's inevitable that we'll have to stop consuming so much meat/fish in the coming years, the planet simply cannot sustain it. The planet won't survive if we don't scale back (or stop completely). So I think MacD's will have to go eventually.

Another one here who cannot understand how the Body Shop is still going. So 90s.

WH Smith's has been around since 1792

@pourqouimoi the body shop has branched out into mlm territory so I think that's keeping it going.

Amazon 100%
Macdonalds
KFC
Starbucks

@Blossomandbee

I remember ages ago a poster on here describing WH Smith as like a cockroach in a nuclear winter. It still makes me chuckle.

I can't see Apple going anywhere anytime soon.
Tesco and Asda I would say are pretty safe. Sainsbury's possibly less so.

Tesco were right in the shit with the accounting issues and a not good online offer a couple of years ago, lockdown saved them!