John Shepherd: “2023 early days report”

In the course of history there have not been many works of art, ballads, poems or sculptures devoted to January and February – especially by speciality food retailers.
It is not easy to wax lyrical about an empty shelf, a wet weekend or a quiet till, or enthuse about staff members using up their holiday entitlement.

In particular, the prospect of January and February 2023 have seemingly struck terror into the general consciousness with news of recession, cost of living crises, war, strikes and distressing personal stories succeeding in subduing any sense of optimism.

One commentator recently referred to the atmosphere in the UK as being a feeling a of national paralysis.

So, as I write this article having completed eight weeks of this turbulent year how is it actually going on the shop floor?

The post-Christmas landscape for speciality food is somewhat bleak and brutal so the fact that we were in January currently trading 12% up on last year would in normal times be seen as a result.

Yet as inflation in food has been recorded by Statista in January at 17% compared to 4% last year this puts matters into perspective.

Also, it can be argued that January 2022 was not a ‘normal’ month with Covid still around, nor was 2021 for that matter. Perhaps going back to the last ‘normal’ year of 2019 would be a better comparison.

This shows that we are 21% up in sales for the same month but as the cost of labour, energy, packaging and almost everything else has also gone up significantly it is hard to derive any measure of comfort from this.

Rather than looking purely at sales referring to customer counts could be a better measure of performance.

In this regar,d we are 8% up compared to the number of customers we had in 2022. But in 2022 we still had Covid restrictions in place with social distancing and other constraints, so the 2023 figures should inevitably be higher.

Going back to 2019 again in terms of customers we have recorded that we are actually 220 customers down this year. At seven customers a day this is not as yet a crisis but not great news either, and shows that any growth suggested by the sales figures is nonexistent.

Moving on to February, has there been any change in fortune with days getting longer and the added bonus of Valentine’s Day to boost sales?

The problem with Valentine’s Day for us is that it does provide a welcome sales boost but usually occurs in half term week and is a two-edged sword. The day after, February 15th, is traditionally one of the slowest days of the year. The spark of romance in our sales has already gone out!

However, February has shown a healthier rise over last year at 22% up. I am not sure why to be honest. It could be the weather. It could be slightly better economic news. Also, customers are up by 13% on 2022 and even up by 1.5% on 2019.

It is too early to predict how the year will pan out, but there may just be the green shoots of recovery starting to emerge. Could the factor of the ‘speciality food niche’ be starting to kick in?

Anyhow, one important lesson from 50 years of retailing is to stop spending a lot of time trying to analyse past sales patterns (no matter how compelling) and start talking to customers in the present. That is where our future success lies.