Food for thought or: making some dough!

摘要

I was going to start this article with a joke about visiting a restaurant recently and finding it had a garden centre selling plants attached. But that would imply I was out of touch with garden centre retailing in the 21st century and quite franklywouldn't have been that funny. I have to admit that it took me quite some time to fully appreciate the role of catering in today's garden centre; but I am now a convert. If I were developing my own garden centre it would be one of the very first facilities I would invest in and I would make absolutely sure that I did it right. I would like to start by considering the reasons for including catering of some description as an integral part of the total offer and then move on to those factors that are critical to success.