GCA: Food for thought
Peter Burks, chief executive officer of the GCA, says that food sales were the big winner last year in garden centres.
Our Garden Centre Association (GCA) Barometer of Trade (BoT) figures show that the big winner last year was food sales, in restaurants, food halls and farm shops, rising by approximately 13% compared to 2023. This trend has continued at the start of 2025, with food halls and farm shops currently running up 6.98% versus the same months in 2024, while catering is up an even more impressive 11.87%. Both these figures are on top of the significant increase achieved last year, so it really is a strong performance.
I often get asked why garden centre restaurants are doing so well, and a recent discussion I had on catering with a group from other industries nicely captured why we do so brilliantly. Generally, we have large, free car parks; large, dry, undercover areas housing other interests and attractions; and large restaurants offering both variety and high-quality food, often with great local provenance. When you put it like this, it’s easy to see why we are successful in this category, and it’s also important to appreciate how much garden centre restaurants have improved over the years.
A catering manager I had the pleasure of working with always used to argue that the only reason that the garden centre that he worked in was so successful was because his catering brought in the customers, and they then spent money in the centre. He would not consider my alternative thoughts. Buoyed by his undoubted success, he decided to leave and set up his own restaurant, closely following the successes he had had in the garden centre restaurant, in the local town. About six months passed before he called in to admit that I was right, and it wasn’t just a good restaurant that would guarantee success, but a partnership of quality categories that brings in the greatest results.
At our recent GCA area meetings for the pre-inspection presentations, the main chat in the industry remains, both since this time last year and again since that autumn budget, around the huge increase in labour costs that most businesses will experience. This is driven by both the minimum wage rise and the increase in national insurance contributions.
Our members have been working on reducing opening hours, removing or reducing labour intensive parts and increasing the use of electronic aids, with the first self-service checkouts being introduced in a garden centre. As most of these changes have only recently been introduced, they are all still being reviewed as to their impact on the business. Hopefully by the end of the year the industry will be in a better place to determine what has worked in a positive way.
Our restaurants and food halls do tend to be high on labour usage, but I would urge everyone not to cut down on these areas, as good service is such an important factor in anyone’s enjoyment of their food and drink. In fact, I feel that really good customer service can go a long way to cover up if quality does slip occasionally. People buy people and it’s good staff that your customers will keep coming back to see. The figures above also tell us that these are areas to focus on and keep developing, not to be cutting back.
As I write this the sun is shing nicely, so hopefully the early season trade is continuing and the gardening categories are getting going.
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