Knowing What's Possible - Part 2
by Danny Summers
In Part 1 last week, we covered the Annual P&L Study for 2025 and the first level of awards, the High Achiever Awards. While Tim Quebedeaux shared the overall benchmarking results from the 2025 study in The Group's March session, we announced the winning Centers for the High Achiever Awards here in GROUPtalk last week. If you missed that, you can catch up HERE.
And now, for the next level of awards, Tim provided this introduction into the Best Practices level...
"Those Centers in the High Achievers Group have two perspectives. First, they are pleased to have reached this level, no longer treading water, finally making progress! They have room to improve and keep up with changes in our industry and our customer base. And second, they know they didn’t do as well as compared to those in the next group, the Best Practices Group."
Annual P&L Study for 2025 – Best Practices Group
This group changes slightly year to year, but there is a solid base of consistently highly profitable Garden Centers. Their goal is 10% or higher operating profit, and when they don’t make it, they (1) know it, (2) figure out WHY, and (3) don’t stay out of it for long.
The Best Practices Centers are our leaders; they set the bar. You can see from the Graph, they don’t just barely make it over 10%, they average way above that… 15% or better for the last 6 years. These are the people you want to get to know, figure out their mindsets and methodologies, and how they do it.
You can find them in Cleveland during The Fall Event 2026!
Congrats to our Best Practices Garden Centers of 2025!
Remember, what you see above is an average of the Best Practices group. Their average profit was 15.5%. That means a good number were above that percentage. Now I again offer this challenge...
"What is Possible?" or "How high is HIGH?"
Knowing What's Possible can be answered by networking within The Group and, of course, as Tim said, "These are the people you want to get to know, figure out how they think, and how they do it.
Next week, we will announce the 100% Club Centers Awards. These Centers reported in the Weekly Department Review (WDR) every week of 2025.
The WDR tracks overall revenue trends, transaction, and average sale. It tracks revenue levels by category as well as margins. It tracks labor, weekly & yearly. It tracks Inventory levels at retail value. It tracks weather metrics. It tracks our results weekly, keeping our finger on the pulse of the inventory in real time. We will award 90 Centers for the 2025 100% Club!
NEW THIS YEAR... All Award Plaques will be shipped to each Award-Winning Center in the next few weeks. We will ask each Center to take a photo of the staff with the plaques in front of the Garden Center and return it to us to share. Here are a few examples we had back in 2020 - when we shipped all plaques!
We Heard You! We have listened to your ideas on how to create more time at The Fall Event 2026 for sharing more from our best performing centers, rather than so much time handing out plaques and taking pictures! Thank you for your ideas!!!
Sharing is at the heart of The Group and your ideas are very important. If you have any trouble logging into The Group WebSystem, please let me know. Are you and your staff all subscribed to our eLists such as GroupEs, Retail-Grower, Retail-Landscape, Owners-Only, and a number of others? Need help subscribing? Let me know so I can show you how you can sign up.
Danny Summers
[email protected]
Tel: 678-909-7770
Cell: 678-761-7145
REMEMBER: Your interaction (by phone and email) with Group Service Providers such as Tim Quebedeaux, John Kennedy, Seawright & Associates, and of course Danny Summers are included in your retainer!