At the ANLA Management Clinic, I heard a lot of people talking about the generation gap. Some were mystified about these foreign entities called Gen Y, and wary of the untold damage they will do to their business in the next few years. Others enjoyed batting around statistics and sharing opinions. Others dismissed the idea of a gap as overblown and as something that would have very little effect on garden centers.
The reason the topic stirs so much anxiety is that retailers don’t have concrete ideas of how to attract younger gardeners. More money on marketing? Better signs, more color in the store? Those ideas are good ones -- and frankly, something stores should be doing anyway. But they are kind of nebulous, not solid in the way that will reassure retailers.
I think I know of a good, tangible way to draw in younger gardeners: Vegetables.
Are veggies the answer?
Growing veggies at home meets a lot of different needs for young homeowners and even apartment dwellers with a sunny balcony.
- Economic. Homegrown veggies are cheap. Prices are soaring at the grocery store, and the first group to feel the pinch are those on their own for the first time and new homeowners.
- Buy local. One of the mantras of the sustainability movement is to favor local vendors first. When it comes to food, this is even more explicit. Consumers are urged to consider “food miles” when they buy their meat and produce, the distance the food had to travel to reach the stores. Stores popular with the younger crowd, like Whole Foods, have really embraced this trend. And what could be more local than growing the vegetables at home?
- Cooking is hot. This generation is really into cooking shows. The hosts are superstars, and many are their peers, like Rachael Ray, Jamie Oliver and Giada. And those customers that are just a few years older have their own peers in Bobby Flay and Mario Batali. Cooking is sexy. And each of these chefs emphasizes good food requires good ingredients. What’s better than freshly harvested?
Ideas to promote homegrown
Just offering vegetables isn’t enough. You need to tell these new homeowners and apartment dwellers they want homegrown vegetables. All the elements are there, you just need to nudge your future customers.
Here are a few ideas on how to do that:
- Move vegetables to the front of the store.
- Create signs that are emotional. Eating homegrown food isn’t just a practical matter. It taps into self-image, health and doing good for the environment. Use pictures that show harvested veggies, a family gathered around a kitchen island, chopping and laughing, or even the completed dish.
- Hold cooking classes. Cooking is hotter than gardening right now. Why not piggyback on the trend? Invite popular local chefs to conduct grilling classes. When you are negotiating the chef’s fee, include a pitch of how you want to encourage locals to take control of what they eat by growing it themselves. That might help reduce the fee. Also, make sure that any vegetables highlighted during the class are set up in a display just outside the door for easy follow-up sales.
- Join your community’s version of the Welcome Wagon. Create a flier emphasizing vegetables and throw in a coupon for new homeowners. Again, the promotional piece must have an emotional appeal. You can throw in a free soil test to assess how ready their yard is for growing veggies.
- Offer ready-to-harvest container vegetables. While most customers who decide they want homegrown vegetables on their table actually want the experience of gardening, you can appeal to the impulse shopper with ready-to-harvest plants. If you carry these, make sure you add tags or signs with something like “Enjoy a fresh cucumber salad for dinner tonight!”
Those are just a few of my ideas. If you brainstorm with your employees, you will likely come up with even more.
One complaint I’ve heard about vegetables is that they are so cheap that they make very little impact on your bottom line. But that’s thinking far too narrowly. If you get these younger gardeners hooked on gardening with vegetables, then you are creating long-term customers. The greatest worry about the younger generation is that they know almost nothing about how to garden. Vegetables just may be the path to garden retail’s future financial health.
-- Carol
Garden centers increased orders for perennials, herbs and annuals in the past 2 years, more than any other categories, a Garden Center Magazine survey reveals.
