I came across this post titled “Restaurants and Monday Nights” at “Fishing for Customers”blog. This stuff is likely well known in Restaurant circles but it was news to me. The post deals with why restaurants are not busy on Monday nights. The post talks about how our first instinct is to build Monday business by increasing our advertising, and offering deals to increase traffic flow. The blog author Chuck tells us why this might not be the way to go.
This made me think of our garden center and how hard we try to build business during times of the year when folks just don’t want to garden, like now! Remember that I write from California where the tradition is for nurseries to be open all year. I know of garden centers in other parts of the country that close down for winter, since the ground is frozen and absolutely no one would come in anyway. Here there is always the chance that someone will come in since the ground does not freeze and we have warmer winter temps. Yet the time of year from November to February is the land of small sales and little or no profit.
We are also closed on Mondays. We chose that day since it seems everyone else closes on Mondays. Monica and I run the store so we needed to pick a day to have off and Monday worked out. Yet, when I wanted to go shopping at downtown Placerville on Main St. last Monday, lot’s of the stores we’re closed. Monday seems to be the day lot’s of small business close. I wonder if we are making a mistake? One reason we chose Monday was we need to be at the store Tuesdays to place orders with some of our vendors for Wednesday deliveries. In other words we let our suppliers dictate to us when we should be closed. Again I wonder if this is backwards?
I would love to hear your take on this. Sometimes it feels like we are spinning our wheels when it comes to certain times of the year. Why throw a lot of advertising $$$ during a season that people just are not going to garden. Maybe we should open Mondays when everyone else is closed and close down another day. Maybe we should be open 7 days a week during spring and only a couple of days during winter. During winter we could open Saturday, Sunday, and Monday and close the other days.
Wishful thinking doesn’t pay the bills. Sure it would be nice to have more business this time of year but I wonder if thats just wishful thinking?
I know you’re interested in consumer education, so I wonder if you might have special weekday (or if that doesn’t work, weekend) workshops… My thought was that you could open an hour or two before the workshop, and an hour or two afterwards. Maybe a winter gardening series every Wednesday? Many people don’t understand that winter is a great time for planting trees, for instance - could you do a workshop about that? (I’d certainly go, if I were a little closer!)
Your idea of renting Christmas trees is interesting, too. We always go to our nursery this time of year to find a nice live rosemary tree for our Christmas tree. They’re great as gifts, too. You probably have something like that, to get people coming into the store? Once inside, I imagine it would be important to have a “winter gardening” section of your store right up front. Again for that consumer education. I would LOVE it if my local nursery gave me tips about what I could be doing over the winter - even on little signs or a pamphlet or something.
You and I have discussed this a bit before in the past - the general lack of winter gardening in our area. I’m going to be in the UC Davis Master Gardener program here in Sonoma County beginning in January. I’m constantly surprised that even many of the Master Gardeners I’ve met don’t really understand winter gardening! But I’m going to infiltrate them : ) and hopefully they will start passing on that information to others!
Comment by Melinda — December 13, 2007 @ 10:35 am
Trey,
I think if you find the right holiday niche with reduced hours, you could capitalize on holiday gift giving and decorating. The scented wreaths is a great idea. In the South Placer section of the Bee today reporter Jennifer Morita covered Eisley’s in Auburn and how they specialize in poinsettas (14 varieties) during the holidays to fill in during the slow times. They have been doing it for many years, seems simple but smart. Now if I could get my Candy Stripe bamboo to sell like poinsettas, not likely, but one could always dream…. happy holidays!
Comment by Sean — December 13, 2007 @ 9:41 pm
Trey,
I would be open every day in Spring….7 days a week. Extra sales days in Spring will help increase cash flow. When you have a bad weather day close up and take your much needed time off. Your customers will understand! Mine do.
Comment by VICTOR FLAHERTY — December 14, 2007 @ 5:52 am
I have worked for three different garden centers that have had to deal with what to do in the winter. The first business sold no nursery materials, only annuals and perennials in the spring and summer. In the winter they sold firewood, bird seed and ice melters. That business started to close on Sundays, the slowest day of the week. Then next two businesses I have worked for both included a florist, so it is much harder to close on Sunday. Both decided to reduce Sunday hours but remain open, the reasoning being that if you miss that floral order once, you drive the customer to the competition and they may not come back.
Comment by Chris — December 14, 2007 @ 8:08 am
I agree with Victor. We are open 7 days a week, March until Christmas. The actual hours fluctuate with the season though. Mid summer through Thanksgiving, our Sunday hours are only 9-3, for instance. Spring and Christmas we are open extra long hours. We sell a few things January and February, like bird seed, firewood, ice melt and propane, but our hours are only 9-3 the whole week, and closed on Sundays. We hate and love this time. It’s slow–we lay off most of the staff, we go skiing & ice fishing, we go away, we have lots of “talks”, we regenerate. I used to live in Breckenridge, CO., and I got to love the concept of “tourist season”, and then down time. Work your ass off, play hard, and be energized–then, do projects around the house, reconnect with whatever centers you, read, cook. (I love the winter for this). We discussed trying to find the “thing” to sell in winter, but I think go with the flow and cut overhead, and enjoy the change of pace. Then jump into spring with vigor!!!
Comment by Jodie — December 14, 2007 @ 12:55 pm
Seven days a week, 362 days a year here (Davis).
I wouldn’t choose a Monday to close. Every Monday that is a holiday (Labor Day, Memorial Day, etc. — there are several!) is like having another Saturday. If I were choosing a day to close, it would be Tuesday.
Comment by Don Shor — December 14, 2007 @ 3:58 pm
We are closed Tuesdays.
We picked it, because like Don said Monday Holidays can have as hot sales volume as weekends. We are also closed January, though it looks like ‘09 will be our last time we close for the whole month, after all if you want good employees you have to keep them working or you loose them. Besides the bills do not take a break for January, so we might as well open the gate since we are at the nursery taking care of stock. Although since we are a speciality nursery we are producing most of our own plants rather than buying it in, so it helps that we can float our production crew to the sales floor if we get a busy rush.
Trey, another way we have been getting people in the door this month, is we reminded them (in our monthly email newsletter) that they needed to have Frost Blankets on hand for December and Januarys cold nights. It is amazing how many of our customers are coming in and buying them, I actually had to reorder twice! And of course they have to go by all the Christmas Cacti and other seasonal blooming offerings to get to the Frost Blankets….
Happy Holidays.
Comment by Hap — December 17, 2007 @ 8:37 am
Trey, whatever you do, be consistent and make sure your regular customers know the schedule. There is nothing more frustrating for a customer than to go some place and find they are unexpectedly closed.
It doesn’t seem to make sense to be open all day in the winter, when customers might be scarce. And I understand you also need time off or you’ll burn out. I’m sure the “big stores” have stats so they know how many sales to expect by hour, by day of week, by month, etc. and they staff accordingly. If only you had such data! Then you could decide what to do and not feel like you were losing sales by being closed at the wrong time.
Carol, May Dreams Gardens
Comment by Carol — December 17, 2007 @ 6:00 pm
I read the article and it makes a good point.
Our nursery is a bit different because Mondays is our busiest mail order day as it usually ensures that the plants will not sit in some courier companies hot sheds over the weekend.
We advertise that we are closed on Monday although all our staff are at work. Often customers still come and we are happy to serve them.
Comment by Correy — December 17, 2007 @ 8:20 pm