Welcome to the summer!

The ridiculously cold weather (and the fact that our Christmas catalogue is at the printers) must mean summer is on its way!  Well, actually we can’t complain – April was a fabulous month for weather with two very warm weekends, which got the punters flooding through the doors of food retailers throughout the UK.  My own company, Cotswold Fayre, was 25% up on last April, and I think this was largely due to the weather with particularly good drinks sales.

I think we have talked about the World Cup before.  Hopefully this year will be different, but the only two other world cup month’s that I have been running business for have been absolute shockers with their being a dramatic reduction in shoppers coming through the door.  It is time to think of ways of selling more to the customers coming in during the world cup.  Fortunately this year most of England’s matches will be in the evening, so hopefully won’t affect sales too much.  This makes them a perfect BBQ occasion, so hopefully with some warmer weather, it will actually be an opportunity to sell more meat, marinades, soft drinks, crisps, other snacks and beer.  There are also a number of football products available, mainly aimed at kids; football lollies, biscuits, gingerbread and chocolate etc… worth stocking up on these, as they will sell after the World Cup anyway.

Whatever the result of the election this week, I am very positive that we are due for a good summer in speciality food retailing.  I have had various meetings with suppliers across the sectors in the last few weeks and almost all are experiencing an uplift in sales compared to last year.  So ensure that your shops look busy and full of stock – success breeds success. Have a good week.