Businesses across Tamworth feeling boom as retail figures smash 2021 statistics

The Australian Bureau of Statistics report shows an increase in turnover from February 2021 to 2022 across all sectors bar two, with one of those predictably being takeaway food services.

Restaurants, cafes and catering services have experienced among the largest increases from 12 months ago, with an additional $174.2 million spent in NSW, and chief executive of Tamworth's Central Hospitality Group, Jye Segboer, said it's been noticeable.

"For February, and also for March, all of our businesses have finished anywhere between 15 to 30 per cent up on even 2019 figures, so before the pandemic figures, so we're very happy with how business is trading at the moment."

While there were stages of 2020 and 2021 that had a higher turnover than right now, business owners have noticed a much more consistent approach to purchasing lately, as opposed to the stop-start nature of the past two years.

From October 2020 to February 2021 - excluding the Christmas rush months of November and December - the disparity from best turnover to worst was $137.8 million, in that same time period in 2021-22, it was only $40.6.

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Mr Segboer said that was particularly pleasing to see after two years of instability, that had been a nightmare for managers and staff and resulted in a negative flow-on effect for the industry.

"We're certainly seeing steady figures on a regular basis so that means rostering is able to be a bit more stable and we know that we can guarantee work to people," he said.

"We're finding that people are interested in coming back into the workforce and back into hospitality again because of the increase in trade, but also the security of knowing they're [the government] not going to shut us down again."

Clothing retail was another winner, with an additional $60 million spent in February 2022.

Town and Country Boutique manager Debbie Woods said the pick up was welcome, but hadn't come without its problems.

With an increase in demand for staff, they have become harder to find, she said, causing issues for the hairdressing side of her business.

"As far as hairdressing goes we book all our clients and we are actually a little restricted because a lot of our hairdressers didn't come back to work," she said.

"We really are short staffed and all my friends that I know that own businesses, are short staffed as well, because things are getting back to normal but we don't have the staff that we did pre-COVID."

Despite the difficulties, she said it's better to be in high demand, and she is confident society has reached the point now that COVID fears are largely being left behind.

"I think that people are starting to deal with it and cope with it, and we're not as scared of it because we actually know people first hand who have had it, where as two years ago we didn't know anyone who had it and it wasn't even in Tamworth.

"So I'm quite proud with the people I've worked with, and know, because we've put it into our lives as a common cold sort of thing that is just something else we have to deal with, especially in business."

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