Welcome To The Summer!

05 May 2010, 15:19 pm
Speciality Bites by Paul Hargreaves

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. We had 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 - largely due to particularly good drinks sales caused by the fine weather.

I think we have talked about the World Cup before. Hopefully this year will be different, but the two other World Cup month’s that I have been involved in have been absolute shockers, bringing a dramatic reduction in shoppers coming through the door.

Fortunately, most of England’s matches will be in the evening this year, so it shouldn’t affect sales too much. This makes them a perfect BBQ occasion, so hopefully 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, such as football lollies, biscuits, gingerbread and chocolate. It’s 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 are full of stock – success breeds success.

Have a good week.

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