Mother’s Day is fast approaching; this year it falls on Sunday March 19. For many adults, the easiest option will be to walk into their local Tesco or Asda and take advantage of their huge in-store displays. These will place flowers next to cards next to chocolate next to prosecco, making it uber easy to pick up everything they need all at once.
However, for the last-minute merchants, it could be more convenient to pop into their local forecourt store and pick something up on their way to see their mum on Mother’s Day itself.
Mother’s Day can often be an initiation for younger children into buying their first gift for someone else. They may get taken to a supermarket to do this or it may be their local shop and in some cases that local shop will be a forecourt store.
According to research from a company called Serenata Flowers, flowers are still the most popular Mother’s Day gift among us Brits, with 48% of adults saying they would show their love for mum by giving her flowers. Carnations are, apparently, very popular.
The research found that chocolate was the second most popular gift for mums (41%) followed by house plants and jewellery (both 24%) and completing the top five was shopping vouchers or gift cards (20%).
So-called ‘garage flowers’ have come in for a lot of flak over the years – and often rightly so – but it must be said that many forecourts have considerably upped their game when it comes to flowers. If you don’t have regular customers for flowers, and therefore don’t usually stock them, or if you want to try something a little different it may be worth getting in touch with a local florist to see whether they can supply you with something different to a bog-standard bouquet. This type of collaboration is a ‘win-win’. It means extra business and wider distribution for the florist plus it ticks the ‘local’ box for customers who like to support local businesses.
Chocolates are an easy line to stock but, again, if you wanted to try something a little different you could try a local supplier or a more specialist wholesaler such as Cotswold Fayre which prides itself on supplying products that are a little less ordinary.
A quick look at their website reveals some fab finds. There are loads of different chocolates plus tubes of upmarket biscuits, bottles of Mermaid gin and my favourite: Super Mum gingerbread figures.
Some mums will prefer a bottle of fizz and while many budgets might not run to a bottle of Champagne, prosecco is usually welcome and much more affordable.
Affordability is definitely going to be key this Mother’s Day so make sure you keep that in mind. Some people might only be able to afford a card and a bunch of daffs. The old adage ‘It’s the thought that counts’ rings true as does the fact that for many mums, seeing their children is the best gift they could get.
No comments yet