Making a Seasonal Business Work Year-round 

By Annie Hanbury, founder and maker of Dorset-based Baboo Gelato, which champions seasonal produce and local ingredients www.baboogelato.com

No-one understands the ebb and flow of the seasons better than farmers, along with the resulting ups and downs of income. While some types of diversifying can serve to smooth out some of the peaks and troughs, many others remain at the mercy of the seasons. 

As an artisanal gelato producer on the Dorset coast, more than 80% of my sales take place between April and September.  The trickiest challenge for my business isn’t just cashflow, it’s how to retain flexibility in staffing while maintaining the core team. 

Of course, cashflow is also difficult as many of our costs are fixed, and we need to build up raw material stock during our leanest period. It’s easy to groan when yet another bill comes through in January for an event in August, but the reality is you must to embrace it. A short-term loan to cover this mismatch is typically not available to a small company, so a nest egg must be built up over the peak season. 

The key is disciplined cashflow planning.  Accounting software like Xero software helps as it gives an instantaneous view of your business and is so user friendly that it doesn’t need to be filtered through a book-keeper.  

It is critical to structure your business model around seasonality, building the most flexible cost base possible. For my gelato business this means having a relatively small core team that are permanently employed.  We have sophisticated recipes which take time to learn, so we need to maintain a highly skilled, happy, loyal team. 

Although I recommend embracing seasonality and championing ingredients at their peak, I also suggest trying to fight it by tracking down counter-cyclical opportunities. Surprisingly for an ice cream business, I added more trade customers in October compared with August last year. I aim to seek new opportunities in low season, such as launching a special winter range, which proved a hit with farm shops. And there are also new areas to focus on, like cinemas and theatres that are busier in the winter than the summer.

During the low season you can take time to review your products and come up with new ideas, visit trade shows and discuss strategies for the coming year.