A local floral shop owner says she and her team have kept very busy this past week preparing for the biggest day on their calendar, coming up on Sunday.
This year, Pero says the hustle and bustle of Mother’s Day did not slow down despite the COVID-19 pandemic, which has been a challenge since only half the staff members are working.
“We’re short-staffed — there’s only two of us working when normally we have a staff of four. … We can only do what we can do.”
The staff has spent the past few days preparing bouquets and other orders that are set to be picked-up Saturday or delivered on Sunday.
Predicting what types of flowers customers will want has been another challenge, Pero says.
“Everything had to be pre-planned weeks ago and pre-ordered, and we pretty much had to guess what we thought we were going to sell, put it online, and hope that we sold it all.”
But to her surprise, Pero says everything on the website has already been sold-out prior to Mother’s Day.
“Considering a pandemic, the flower industry has rebounded like crazy. All the floral shops that I know are super busy and sold out.”
Steve Jambor, an owner at Forest of Flowers, is experiencing first-hand how “super busy” it is to operate a floral shop during this time of year, especially during a pandemic.
“By the end of weeks like this, even we get a little bit tired. The volumes are just quite out of this world come big holidays.”
Jambor told Jess Brady on the Afternoon Show on 980 CFPL Friday the flower shop is also struggling with decreased staff and increased work.
“Last year, we had about seven or eight people in the store. This year, we have two.”
Maintaining safe physical distancing between the staff isn’t always easy either.
But Jambor says the biggest challenge currently “is the local growers that we counted on throughout the years, they don’t have the manpower to cut the flowers and pack them and deliver them to the store.”
“[Sometimes], we’re expecting 50 pails of flowers and five show up.”
Despite the challenges, Jambor says the store has seen a 150 per cent increase in sales compared to last year.
“We’re up in our deliveries because that’s the only way people can receive the flowers. There’s no in-store pick-up, there’s no curb-side pick-up.
“Normally, throughout the year, we’ll miss maybe 10 to 15 percent of the deliveries that are sent out. This year, we haven’t had a single one out of the hundreds come back.”