GCA column: Centres of excellence
Chief executive officer Peter Burks reveals what the Garden Centre Association learned abouts its member during the judging of its recent Area Awards.
We have just concluded the Garden Centre Association (GCA) Area Awards events, as the early summer sees the end of the annual inspection window for our member garden centres. Every GCA member garden centre gets an unannounced visit from one of our team of four expert inspectors during the three-month period from mid-March to mid-June.
There are 218 individual factors that are inspected and scored, usually out of 10, which cover every area of the garden centre. These include their appearance from the roadside to the toilets and restaurant, and every retail area including indoor lifestyle, food halls and farm shops.
They also include three random phone calls, one of which will be to the restaurant, e-mail enquiries and a review of every garden centre’s social media. Every centre must score at least 50% in order to remain a member of the GCA, so it is a way of maintaining the standards of our members, as well as a tool for all members to use to improve their offers in any given area.
We also do national awards for each retail category such as Indoor Living, Outdoor Living, Catering, Food Halls/Farm Shops and so on, which are usually sponsored by a supplier to that section. These national awards are announced at our annual conference in January. The standards in our restaurants, coffee shops and food sections have been rising steadily over the last few years, and I’m very pleased to say that in this year’s scoring the top catering facilities in our centres achieved scores of more than 90%.
These centres are of varying sizes, so it’s not just the biggest that are getting this category right. The standards of both the food offering and merchandising all around the country are truly superb.
The area winners were Ruxley Manor, Klondyke Byrkley Park, Thetford Garden Centre and Fron Goch. These will be in line to contend the national award, sponsored by Clifton Coffee Roasters, at our conference at the DeVere Hotel Wokefield Park, near Reading in January.
Our inspectors each visit between 50 and 60 different garden centres within an area, so by the end of their tour they have a very comprehensive view of what is going on in our members’ businesses. The catering offer changed quite significantly during the covid times, and these experiences have influenced further tweaks as to how some of the restaurants now function. Homemade cakes and dishes, as well as using local suppliers or certainly knowing provenance, have become very important to our customers, backed up by excellent customer service.
Garden centres are part of the leisure industry, so it’s important that our customers can come and have a relaxed, fun time with us. However, in their award presentations, our inspectors noted that there have not been many significant or unique changes to what we offer over the last 12 months. It’s important to be continually improving to keep our customers interested and it will be fascinating to see where the next innovations come from.
The increasing cost of labour is having a big impact on the profitability of garden centre restaurants and is causing much discussion within our association. This will initiate changes to working practices to ensure that these great attractions remain viable, and I’m sure this will drive innovation and new ways of doing things.
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