GCA column: On the rise

The importance of the hospitality category in our Garden Centre Association (GCA) members’ garden centres continues to be reinforced with each passing season. The recent extreme heatwave would once upon a time have spelt a complete turnoff for sales in the restaurants and, indeed, often for much of the garden centre.

However, our Barometer of Trade figures for June show catering increased by a healthy 6.51%, while food hall/farm shop sales were up by 3.63% year-on-year. This demonstrates once again that our customers will come to our restaurants no matter what the weather is doing.

I am sure one of the drinks they will have been consuming will have been iced coffees. This modern phenomenon – who would have thought garden centres would be selling iced coffee a few years ago? – further demonstrates the advances our hospitality sector has made.

I have attended all three of the sessions our GCA Hospitality Rising Stars group have enjoyed, starting with a wonderfully informative event at Beanworks Coffee. It was a most stimulating day, starting with coffee tasting, leading to wine-like descriptions, barista training and then making new recipes, which of course included iced coffees. It was all absolutely timely and on trend.

We followed this up with a trip to Brakes. Here the focus was on making profitable use of leftovers. The range of food cooked was enormous and we all came away bursting.

There was a great presentation from a representative from WildFarmed products, an award-winning farming and food business. Its mission is to encourage regenerative farming practices, thereby increasing biodiversity, improving soil health, minimising water pollution and, of course, reducing carbon emissions on its farms. It was great to hear how Brakes is supporting this activity, which would be a great story to be able to pass onto our customers, who we know have a big interest in the quality and provenance of the food we produce.

The latest trip was to visit Rational in Luton. Who knew modern ovens were so clever! Again, a great range of food was produced, with the company’s expert chefs able to demonstrate how using the most up to date equipment saves time and energy, enabling a less-skilled workforce to produce great quality, all while reducing waste. It was a real eye-opener on how modern programming enables these ovens to be so efficient.

The schedule, organised and mentored by Costas Constantinou, whose company Kosko provides advice and support on all hospitality matters, continues soon with the next event – a trip to discuss how to plan a kitchen layout with expert input from the Gratte Brothers team.

The group is being exposed to training and areas of the industry that are usually completely off limits to all but the most senior chefs or largest restaurant operators in the country. It has been great to see and hear how they have interacted with the chefs and trainers, as well as within the group.

The participants clearly return to their centres with a much greater understanding of what is achievable and with ideas on how to improve their current practices. We are already planning next year’s programme.

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