The wholesale channel artisan food and drink brands keep overlooking
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Today's garden centre has a butcher, a baker, and quite possibly a candlestick maker. Alongside all-purpose compost and grass seed, you'll find locally sourced jams, single-origin coffee, artisan biscuits, craft beer, flavoured oils, award-winning chutneys, heat-and-eat meals – you name it. The cafe or farm shop attached to your local garden centre has, without much fanfare, become one of the most interesting places to buy food in the UK.
More than a day out
Take Gates Garden Centre in Leicestershire, the destination of our latest Glee Roadshow. Their award-winning farm shop has a working gin distillery and a do-it-yourself peanut butter maker. This is the kind of food and drink retail experience that delights customers and keeps them coming back.
Gates isn't the only centre leveraging their food and drink offering. Dobbies runs 77 restaurants across its portfolio, Blue Diamond has full-service dining across 38 centres, and British Garden Centre Group reports that food now accounts for over 30% of their total revenue and is their highest margin category. According to the Horticultural Trades Association (HTA), garden centre cafés and restaurants attracted 148 million visits in 2024, with 56% of UK adults visiting at least once. In 2023, restaurants and cafés recorded 23% revenue growth across the sector.
Where customers linger
People visit garden centres the way they used to visit department stores or shopping centres – for a few hours, not a few minutes. They browse, they eat, and they pick things up they didn't plan to buy but couldn't leave without. A bottle of strawberry kombucha in hand-illustrated packaging. A tin of parmesan and rosemary crackers that look perfect on a cheeseboard. A jar of chili crunch with a label that tells a story. The right product, in the right environment, with the right branding doesn't need a hard sell – it just needs to be there.
What buyers are actually looking for
For the buyers stocking these farm shops and café operations, that footfall is both an opportunity and a real sourcing challenge. Customers at these centres are experienced shoppers – they read labels, they care about provenance, and they notice slick packaging and branding. Trade buyers are actively sourcing artisan producers, local suppliers, honest ingredients, and wholesale-ready brands with a clear identity and strong shelf presence.
The gap food brands haven't spotted
A lot of specialty food and drink brands haven't considered garden retail as a wholesale route to market. They're working farmers markets, pitching independent delis, and cold calling multiples and supermarkets. Meanwhile, garden centre buyers with real budgets and shelves to fill are attending trade shows en masse, looking for products their customers can’t resist toting to the till.
Explore what exhibiting might look like for your brand
Where that conversation happens
Glee, the UK's leading garden trade show, takes place at the NEC Birmingham this September. Our dedicated Food Hall brings artisan food and drink producers together with buyers from garden centres, farm shops and destination retailers across the UK. If you've never thought of garden retail as a route to market, it might be time to reconsider.
Plus, Glee is co-locating with Autumn Fair on 8–9 September, giving you access to over 20,000 combined buyers from independent gift shops, homeware stores, fashion boutiques and beyond – all under one roof, in a single trip. These are buyers actively sourcing products with gifting appeal and strong branding that taste great. For a food and drink brand that ticks those boxes, garden retail might just be the wholesale channel you've been sleeping on.
Glee 2026 takes place 8–10 September at the NEC Birmingham, co-located with Autumn Fair on 8–9 September.