Agriculture Reference
In-Depth Information
Fig. 7. 1.
Czech garden centre displaying pumpkins and plants together in late summer.
Successful garden centres over recent years have had to rethink their
retail model; what was a successful retail model in 1980 is not a successful
model in 2015. The retail garden industry developed by selling products, the
consumer of today buys 'dreams', hence the garden retail model has
had to change completely. Many traditional garden retailers have found this
difficult to understand and to adapt their business model to meet the new
consumer demands.
Progressive independent garden centres found they had to introduce
some of the following additional activities to appeal to the changed con-
sumer needs:
•
Farm shops, which are in competition with farm shops on the farm.
Examples of successful food offers in the retail garden sector include
The Hole Enjoy Centre in St Albert, Alberta, Canada and Barton Grange
Garden Centre and Farm Shop near Preston, Lancashire, UK. The gar-
den centre food offer tends to be a food hall rather than a farm shop,
although some garden centres have managed to create genuine farm
shop retail offers. According to research carried out by Readex Research
in the USA in July
2013,
1
10% of American garden centres have or are
looking at including a farmers' market (farm shop) in store within their
centre;
•
Restaurants that serve local foods. The prepared food sector of the garden
industry can now be as large in turnover as the garden sector. The early
adopters of the food offer in the industry often served standard processed
food with little consideration for quality or food sourcing. This has now
changed and many garden centres have established an authentic regional
