MARKETING have something to eat while they're here. In 2021, we started having food trucks basically every Saturday and Sunday during the spring, summer and fall that I could book. Sometimes there were weekends when I couldn't book anyone. " Customers really enjoy coming out, getting a smoothie or a cup of coffee and sipping on that while they're shopping. They also like to come out and make a day of visiting our store. We are a destination garden center, so we regularly have people visit from 45 minutes away - that's very normal - and up to like three or four hours away on a weekend. And so people make an event of coming out. They make the journey out and then they have food to eat while they're here and they don't have to leave, and it becomes part of the whole experience for our customers. They really enjoy the all-inclusive experience of visiting. " And just about every time - except for when people got rained out - the food trucks seemed to have a good time. They were happy to be here and most of them want to come back. " She says that the food trucks add value to events they host. " We have something called a Succulent Solstice, for example, where we have some of our staff talk about succulents. We invite the local clubs to come and have meetings or meetups here during that day. And then we also We first began integrating food trucks just to make customers' visits more convenient. And then when we saw the feedback that we were getting - people really liked the pairing. - Liz Hughes Groovy Plants Ranch began integrating food trucks to make customers' visits more convenient. LGRMAG.COM | 21http://www.LGRMAG.COM