Speciality Food Magazine

Hopefully some of you have had time off with the kids during the Easter holidays, and maybe this week is your first back at work. I always think that the week after Easter is a very significant one. With many of us operating financial years that run from April to March, this week is always near the start of the financial year.

So, it's time to put into place commission and bonus plans for staff and even the odd wage increase. Not only that, our turnover will generally increase gradually from here towards the end of the year, with a possible dip in August. It is also a good time to re-merchandise the store, ready for the summer.

Let’s look at a few things that will help us during the rest of 2010, which I am convinced will be a good one for most of us. After the disastrous weather conditions in January, this year has been fabulous – my own company is around 25% up year-on-year from mid-January onwards.

• Ensure you have enough staff for the busy year ahead. Plan to grow and don’t be too stretched with the staff you already have. There are plenty of Government schemes at present to encourage us to take on more staff. Even if you can’t make use of one of these, always running at full capacity will hinder your business, as staff will be off sick more. You also won't have enough time to plan effectively for the year ahead.

• Plan for the football World Cup. This is one of the big events coming up in the next few months. World Cup months are traditionally quite difficult for speciality food retail, but let’s think of innovative ways to target products at world cup parties; snacks, beer, and easy-to-cook food.

• Hopefully the onset of the world cup will also bring the beginning of the BBQ season, so ensure that you are well stocked up on meat, relishes, marinades, sauces etc. Remember to be positive! It's highly likely we will have a good summer with plenty of sunshine, so merchandise ahead for hot weather foods. This is something the supermarkets do very well. Why not get a box of charcoal in if you can get a good price?

That’s it from me this week. I need to go back to testing (and understanding) our new business software system, which has taken us all Easter and the week after to install and start operating properly. Very hard work, but it's going to massively improve the quality of our reporting systems and, most importantly, give us a greater ability to serve our customers well with CRM.