Protecting Your Time: Three Ways Local Flowers Reduce Labor For Florists

ivory zinnias and gold sunflowers en masse

Five years ago, during the early days of COVID-19, I began selling sourdough bread from our farmhouse kitchen.  Although I had been baking for years, felt confident with my recipes, and had taken the time to calculate the cost of the ingredients I was using for each batch, there was one factor that I wasn’t fully considering in my business.  As my relationship with my customers grew, so did the number of requests for changes and modifications.  What began as a simple schedule rapidly evolved into a stressful routine of baking multiple recipes each week to meet demand.  This created deep feelings of frustration and stress, because I – like so many small business owners – forgot one important detail.  That detail was time.

As my business grew, I noticed that while I was very familiar with the cost of my materials, what I wasn’t honoring was my time – an inefficiency that cut into my profits.  I see now that my time is precious, and it was totally up to me to reflect on this and establish key boundaries for my business moving forward.  While this is a lesson I had to learn the hard way, I continue to carry it with me on my farm.  For me, time is my most precious and limited resource.  I’ve also learned which hours of my time bring in cash flow, and which ones do not.  The mental load of managing every task we do is already huge in a small business, and this hidden inefficiency – the extra, unpaid time that sneaks into our workflow – adds up quickly. 

When I look back on that phase of my business, I know that this experience taught me an invaluable lesson about hidden labor: the extra, uncalculated time that adds up behind the scenes.  Protecting your time is crucial to prevent burnout and ensure the longevity of your business.  Just as I learned to protect my time by refining my workflow, I value opportunities to help others do the same.  When working with new flower farmers, I teach them to track hidden labor through careful time studies in every task they complete.  The same is true for the businesses I sell my cut flowers to.  For florists, hidden labor may show up in the time it takes to unpack flowers, wait for flowers to properly hydrate, and coordinate when flowers arrive in less-than-ideal condition.  One of the simplest ways to cut hidden labor is by rethinking where flowers come from.  Sourcing locally offers a solution to reducing the workload – and its related stress.

Simple Packaging: Florists who source locally often notice that they save a significant amount of time unpacking their flowers each week.  Unlike flowers that are shipped in layers of plastic, cardboard, or foam, local flowers are bundled simply: typically with just a rubber band, and, only when necessary, a compostable kraft paper sleeve.  Fewer packaging materials create a faster unpacking process and less waste to manage, allowing florists to transition faster to the work that brings in cash flow, like designing and marketing.

Hydrated & Ready to Go: Beyond the time spent unpacking flower orders, hydrating flowers properly can be both time-consuming and stressful, as some ingredients don’t rehydrate as consistently as others.  Local flowers, on the other hand, have been in water since the moment they were harvested - often mere hours before delivery - meaning that they are already hydrated and ready to use.  This eliminates the need for extended conditioning and reduces shrink from flowers that have trouble hydrating.

Less Shrink, Less Stress: One of the biggest headaches for florists is receiving flowers only to find that they are damaged, bruised, or simply too old to perform well in arrangements.  Because local flowers are so fresh and don’t have to travel thousands of miles, they can be trusted to arrive in the best possible condition with minimal loss.  When florists don’t have to discard fresh materials because what they purchased can be used right away, they also won’t need to spend time filing claims or seeking replacements.

An assortment of locally-grown flowers and foliage arranged in buckets in the cooler