ROMEO, Mich. – It’s not too late to order flowers for your partner for Valentine’s Day, which is Monday (Feb. 14), and it’s not too late to help your local florist in the process.
No matter where you are or where you’re sending flowers to, your local florist is asking you to take one more extra step before ordering.
“Call us directly,” said Roz Mischley with the Village Florist of Romeo. “It’s very easy to click a button on the internet, but oftentimes people are getting what we call ‘order gatherers’ which are just computer-based order takers.”
Mischley has been doing this for 35 years, and she will tell you how online ordering has also gotten pretty tricky. You might think you’re ordering from your local establishment because web designers have gotten slick with mirroring websites.
“They can hijack phone numbers and addresses, and they always say ‘we’re your local florist, we can order anywhere in 24 hours,’” Mischley said. “When you see that, you should know that they can not do that.”
Even if you get a reputable online company, many are order-takers who farm out that specific order to the little local guy.
“Taking a large what they would call a service fee, and they pay a minimum for flowers ,” Mischley said. “Well, they send us that minimum for flowers ; they don’t send us that service fee. So they receive that big chunk of change we have to fill the order for that minimal amount.”
Service fees can cost local florist up to 30% of the price. So consider this, if you order online to a farm-out flower service and that order costs a total of $108.90 for a dozen roses, the local florist who fills that order will only get a maximum of $76 depending on the fee structure.
But if you spent $76 on your local florist, not only do all of those profits stay in that community, but you’ll likely get more for your money by paying less.
“You are getting quality product that is being brought in for Valentine’s Day,” Mischley said. “We are still cutting product that has just come to us, and that product will go out the door rather it’s Saturday, Sunday, Monday, it’s all within days of us receiving it.”
And so that one extra step is finding online and making a call. Ask for the physical address of the shop. If it’s within a five or ten-mile radius of who you’re sending the flowers to and you’re satisfied you’re dealing with a local brick and mortar, that one extra step goes a long way.
Read: More Valentine’s Day coverage