Awards interview: British Garden Centres

Brothers Charles and Robert Stubbs shared a passion for gardening and business at a young age, founding British Garden Centres back in 1987 while they were still at school. The restaurant followed in its footsteps and quickly became a staple of each location in the portfolio.

The business now operates approximately 60 garden centre restaurants, each dedicated to their local area. Ricky Towers tells us how they are central to the groups’s offer…

First, what’s your role and background?
I manage all the restaurants and on-site food operation across the group. I actually worked for British Garden Centres about 13 years ago. I Ieft to go and do something else, then rejoined six and a half years ago.

It was just as we began the expansion to absorb the large number of Wyevale sites we acquired at the time. They took the business from nine to 58 sites, and we have gradually assimilated further businesses into the group since.

And that of the business?
It was founded by the Stubbs brothers in a small village in Lincolnshire. They operated the Woodthorpe garden centre for many years and then started to acquire sites, growing steadily over 15 years or so. I believe there were six sites in 2012. They operated the business up until 2018 when it became the British Garden Centres Group.

But the business has remained family run, even as it has grown?
Yes, we're the largest family-owned garden centre group. We are now one of the real movers in the industry, but that family ownership underpins some really strong values that we still stand behind, such as running great restaurants that are open to everybody. We try to make them unpretentious.

We are a true garden centre as well. You will see a good quality garden offering plenty of plants. It's not just a subsidiary where some of them have less and less plants, we are still horitculure based.

You seem to have been expanding a lot recently?
We did slow downe after the Wyevale purchase and pick up one or two sites a year. Then we acquired the Langlands Group last August, which was three centres in a small group all based in Yorkshire.

We have taken over seven Dobbies sites this year. We are delighted to see them join the business and we are really excited about the opportunities that they present. It's been a mammoth task that everyone's incredibly proud of – the fact that we've been able to take those sites on, renovate them, bring them up to a standard that we feel proud of and then operate them under our food offering.

Each of your centres is still ‘localised’ though…
Yes, while we operate a nationwide business, we do recognise that all sites are different. We have things that will sell in some centres that won't sell in others, so we make sure that things like our special cakes and specials reflect the local area. We also do the same with the plants.

It the catering side important to your offer?
Absolutely, it's a pivotal driver of the operation. It makes up a large portion of the sales and it's the footfall driver. It's the reason people make a decision to visit us and we use this to leverage trade throughout the year.

I understand that you review your offer every March. How is that going?
What we tend to do is review our menus periodically throughout the year. We normally do a refresh in October and a new menu in March, where we remove a handful of dishes and generally evolve what we do. We know what our guests like, we know what is popular with the Great British public, but we keep pushing it forward and reinventing ourselves.

Are there certain best-sellers that you would never remove?
Yes, absolutely, the sort of things you would find in most restaurants; things like fish and chips, gammon and we sell a huge amount of carveries, many hundreds of thousands of them a year. Those things are the core staples.

What we tend to do is look at adding things like, say, sourdough to our breakfasts. They're very simple things, but they what people want now as tastes move forward.

What’s your USP? Why do you think you won this award?
We run individual garden centres. What they're not is like McDonald's. They are not cookie cutter representations at our restaurants. They're all individual. You won't walk into one of our restaurants and see the same specials on every day.

The biggest thing, though, is that the people at the heart of the business are happy and the best they can be. We have great teams and great managers, all doing a great job.

How important is recognition like this award?
It was fantastic to be recognised like this, because the garden centre industry is keen on rewards. For everyone's hard work over the last six or seven years to be acknowledged was very gratifying, and I was delighted to receive this award.

Finally, what one tip would you offer on running a great garden centre catering offer?
The devil's in the detail, on everything from maintaining a strong control of costs to making sure our people are the very best they can be. We give them the tools to allow them to focus on doing their jobs well and a product that they can be proud of. Then they can help drive repeat customers.

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