If you haven’t bought flowers for Valentine’s Day yet, you might want to hurry up — according to a Winnipeg florist, there’s no guarantee you’ll be able to get what you want this year.
“It’s been a weird year, and I think that’s true for every business, but particularly in flowers — because they’re real, live, perishable, grown products — supply and demand is a big thing,” said Catherine Metrycki of Callia Flowers.
“We’ve just had to be really flexible and that’s one of the things I’m asking of customers as well — understand that we’re working really hard and the farms are working as hard as they can, but it might not exactly be what you’ve pictured… and that’s OK.”
Metrycki told 680 CJOB her business typically takes same-day orders even on the busiest flower day of the year, but Valentine’s Day 2021 is a unique circumstance.
“We’re seeing people starting to get their orders in for flowers early. We’re hoping we’re going to be taking orders up until Valentine’s Day, but no promises,” she said.
“Typically we take same-day orders up until 12:30 every day, but this year’s going to be a challenge.”
The issue, Metrycki said, is that the pandemic has been a hard one to navigate for growers, which has led to supply/demand issues for retailers.
“They weren’t sure what was going to happen with COVID and what was gonna happen as different markets opened and closed with different restrictions,” she said.
“All of that has impact in terms of demand of flowers, and what we’re seeing is they’re just having a hard time providing consistent supply.”
That being said, Metrycki says the quality of flowers she has received leading up to the holiday have been of “incredible” quality — but you’d better order them up soon.
Winnipeg isn’t the only Canadian city with supply and demand issues when it comes to flowers.
A Calgary florist told Global News on Monday that he wasn’t sure flower shops in that city would be able to meet the demand either.
“Flowers fly under the bellies of passenger planes and as you know, there aren’t many passenger planes coming in now internationally, so flower supply becomes a big issue,” Incredible Florist owner Daniel Lim said.
“My best estimate: the supply is about 25 per cent less this year.”
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