Garden centre cafés are becoming increasingly popular destinations for customers looking to combine their love of gardening with a culinary stop. For garden centres, adding a café provides a significant opportunity for revenue enhancement and diversification, as well as increase footfall. So much so that the inclusion of a restaurant or cafe can improve gross retail margins by as much as 76% (Savills).
According to the latest HTA Industry Insights booklet in 2024, garden centre cafés and restaurants saw 148 million visits, with 56% of UK adults visiting.
Café staples, such as coffee and cocoa prices have already more than doubled over the past year, with ongoing weather events expected to continue to hit crop yields and create further price spikes. A combination of higher-than-average rainfall and higher temperatures have led to coffee prices up 103% and cocoa prices up 163% in the last 12 months (Year end January 31, 2025).
Inverto, the procurement and supply chain management subsidiary of Boston Consulting Group says that they are expecting food prices to remain volatile throughout 2025. The long-term trend towards more extreme weather events will continue to hit regional crop yields, causing sudden price spikes.
Similarly, sunflower oil prices have increased 56% in the past year as drought in Bulgaria and Ukraine (as well as the continued impact of the war) has led to poor crop yields, creating further unpredictability in sunflower oil prices.
Businesses should plan for the ongoing volatility of food prices by adapting their procurement strategy, advises Inverto. Retailers are advised to diversify their supply chains and sourcing strategies to reduce over reliance on any one region. Weathering price shocks by negotiating forward contracts with sellers, can help mitigate the risks of price volatilities.
“The impact of price volatility can also be reduced by leveraging advanced risk management AI tools,” explains Katharina Erfort, Principal at Inverto. “Companies should also undertake more contingency planning that will allow them to more quickly swap one food commodity for another. For example, the rise in orange juice prices has led manufacturers to look at how they switch for example to apple juice, which hasn’t seen the same price increase.”