Catering helps UK Garden Centers chart a 2.27% sales increase year-to-date

By Barry Lane|Dec 8, 2023|10:31 am GMT

October sales

Christmas came early for Garden Centers in September, and the Garden Center Association (GCA’s) barometer of trade shows that Christmas sales are still going great guns into October – charting a nearly 5% increase on the month before.

The GCA provides a monthly overview of member sales across 13 categories. This month’s figures highlight a ‘strong food theme’ for October.

Something for everyone

Catering is perhaps one of the best examples of diversification within the garden centre sector more generally, and has helped many in their quest to become a destination venue. The variance within garden centre catering is rather impressive in and of itself – from tea rooms to food halls and farm shops, there’s no ‘set way’ that the industry has embraced food and beverage.

This is reflected in the GCA categories, with catering and food hall/farm shop recorded separately. Both categories made it into the top three this month, with catering up 12.97% and farm shop/food hall posting a 8.33% sales increase.

While both plant sales and seeds and bulbs were both down on last month (-4.78% and 0.41% respectively), it’s a positive story for the sector. Eight of the 13 categories saw an uplift in sales, and the GCA noted a positive year-to-date variance of 2.27%.

Chief Executive, Peter Burks, summed up this month’s findings: “Catering continued to be the strongest performing category in our member garden centres during October with plant sales understandably struggling, given the very wet weather. But overall, an encouraging, albeit small, increase in sales.

“The strong food theme continued with food halls and farm shops up by 8.33% and it’s great to see a decent increase in Christmas sales, which we hear is continuing into November.”

Navigating the festive season

There’s already a fair amount of speculation within the hospitality and retail sectors about consumer behaviours going into this holiday season and what that might mean for peak trading.

Deloitte found that 29% of consumers intend to spend less this year than last, something we might be seeing playing out in garden centres as spending in the gift category remains almost static at -0.06% in October compared to September. We’ll need to wait for November’s figures to make a call on that.

The same study also found that around one third of consumers were intending to spread the cost of the holidays over a few months. While consumers might be holding off on discretionary spending, October’s boost in food hall/farm shop could suggest that we’re less likely to cut back on food spending over the festive season. Another one to keep an eye out for when November figures drop.

Understanding volatile demand

Fourth is helping businesses across the hospitality and retail sectors to understand demand volatility and navigate their way confidently through an unpredictable festive season with advanced analytics and forecasts powered by artificial intelligence.