Grocery Store Vs. Florist

Flowers are a luxury item.

I just want to let that sentence hang there like that. Flowers are a luxury item. That is something I have started hearing more and more frequently. I have been working in the floral design world for 12 years now, and it is a new thing to hear this - but flowers have always been a luxury item if you really do think about it. I am not talking run-of-the-mill bouquets from the grocery store. I am not even knocking a bouquet from a grocery store. There was a point in my life I used to buy bouquets from the grocery store.

So I am going to share what I now know that I did not know before. These local flower shops that are "charging an arm and a leg to play with flowers all day" have a lot going on that customers do not see! Grocery stores have flowers out of convenience to the customer, and often as a loss leader (cheap product sold with little to no profit to bring shoppers inside). These bouquets come in pre-made from a wholesale and usually all the same or very similar. Prices are set, designs are set, colours are set. Those bouquets get put out on arrival and either sit there until they are purchased or tossed out because they have expired.

When you come into a local florist, the stems have a much higher level of care. Wholesale boxes of packages of stems arrive to our shop, we unpack them all as dry stems and cut each of them before placing in water that has flower food in them. They often come in packages of 5, 10 or 25 stems, depending on flower type. Some come as single stems. We allow the stems to drink for an hour at room temperature before putting them into our cooler for (what I like to call) "hibernation". We take care to clean the greenery that will be below the water level, and ensure any delicate varieties get extra care when necessary!

This can take many hours by the time it is finished, and we sometimes do even more prep on flower stems before we use them in a bouquet or a vase. We always want to ensure by the time it gets to the person who is going to be enjoying the arrangement they simply need to place it on their table! There is almost always a designer in the shop to ensure we can make floral designs while you wait - but this won't be available on floral holidays (Mother's Day, Valentine's Day, sometimes the days leading up to Christmas).

At the end of the day, you are paying for a skilled labour that can take years to master. I am learning with each day, each customer and each request I get. Flowers are my business, and I will do them to the best of my ability!