By Tipp Spradlin
In Florida, we don’t measure the year by the weather, we measure it by who is visiting.
The holiday season is the brief window between Black Friday and New Year’s Eve. Snowbird season is when northern license plates migrate south for the winter. Spring Break season is March Madness without the brackets. Memorial Day to Labor Day is when we welcome the masses and quietly remind ourselves they’re helping pay the bills.
Each of these seasons brings a different type of buyer to the counter and a different challenge for local businesses. But summer is the big one.
By September, most locals are enjoying lighter traffic and shorter wait times at their favorite restaurants. I can’t help but think of The Wizard of Oz when Glinda gently coaxes the Munchkins out of hiding and tells them the Wicked Witch is gone. And they all rejoice.
But before we put another summer behind us, it’s worth figuring out what we learned from it. Grab the people who survived the summer with you, order some lunch, and start there.
Where did the business struggle?
What worked perfectly well in February but fell apart when July hit?
Maybe it was staffing, scheduling, inventory, equipment or communication. Your employees are the best source of intel. They dealt with problems you never saw and probably came up with workarounds you don’t know about. Ask nicely, bribe them if you have to, but get their feedback while everyone still remembers what happened.
What did your customers tell you?
Think about what customers repeatedly asked for, complained about or couldn’t get.
Maybe they wanted different hours, a product you don’t carry, online ordering or a service you don’t offer. Pay attention to patterns. You don’t have to chase every suggestion, but repeated requests or complaints are free market research.
How did this summer actually compare to last summer?
Memory is a terrible accounting system and napkins aren’t general ledgers.
A packed parking lot, ringing phones and exhausted employees can make a season feel successful, but being busy doesn’t always equal profitability. Pull up your Profit & Loss statement and find out if it actually was.
Compare the same months year over year. Look at revenue, payroll, cost of goods and other major expenses. Did you make more money? Did it cost considerably more to make it? Where did margins improve or shrink?
Too many small businesses wait until the end of the year to really look at their books. By then, you can see what happened, but you may not remember why.
Worse, a problem that showed up during Spring Break could quietly eat into profits all summer before anyone notices it in December.
What are you keeping, fixing or changing?
Maybe a new process worked beautifully. Document and standardize it.
Maybe staffing was a constant struggle. Is there something you could do differently next season, or do you need to plan around the reality that finding enough people will continue to be difficult?
Maybe customers kept asking for something you don’t offer. Is it worth exploring or is it just another TikTok fad?
Maybe the numbers showed that your busiest month wasn’t actually your most profitable one. That’s worth understanding.
Not every problem has an easy fix, and some may not have a fix at all. The point is to know which challenges you can control, which ones you need to plan around, and which opportunities are worth pursuing.
Pick a few things worth acting on, write them down and make sure they don’t get forgotten before the next busy season. Do this after every season that matters to your business.
Tipp Spradlin is a Human Business Sales Advisor with First Choice Business Brokers, NW Florida, helping buyers navigate business transactions with clarity and confidence. Reach her at tipp.spradlin@fcbb.com or 850-532-8882.
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