Romance is big business for small flower shop on Valentine's Day
Jackie Callison holds up a box of dry packed flowers, delivered in preparation for Valentine’s Day. (Kathleen Woodford/Mineral Independent).
Sue Gross, an employee at Jackie’s Flower Shop, creates an arrangement with purple roses. The shop will sell about 400 roses for Valentine’s Day. (Kathleen Woodford/Mineral Independent).
By KATHLEEN WOODFORD
Mineral Independent
Valentine’s Day represents love and romance. It’s a day that lovers, friends and family express their affections towards each other. It’s also a day of big business as those sentiments are expressed with things like dinner, cards, flowers and gifts.
All totaled, more than $13 billion was spent last year, according to 2016 Statistic Brain reports. Approximately 180 million cards were exchanged, and over 198 million roses were deliveredin 2016. Candy was the most popular item given out, followed by flowers, cards, jewelry, dining out, clothing, gift cards and other gifts.
Jackie Callison, owner of the only floral shop in Mineral County, said she orders around 400 roses for Valentine’s Day, along with several hundred more “fillers” which includes baby’s breath, tulips, carnations, and greens. The bulk of the flowers arrived at her little shop, called Jackie’s Flower Shop, located in Superior, on Thursday, Feb. 9. She said they had six big boxes delivered, each containing hundreds of flowers.
“We had boxes all over the place,” she said.
The boxes come with bundles of flowers dry packed. They are separated, and put into a solution of water and flower food to rehydrate, and stored in coolers. The roses are then dethorned and made into beautiful floral arrangements.
An arrangement of a dozen roses can cost more than $80, because of the high demand for them on Valentine’s Day, Callison explained. Most of the roses come from South America. She said a lot of people place their orders ahead of time, and people can pick up their arrangements, or they can deliver anywhere in the county.
“But a lot of people also wait until the last minute,” she said, “and so Valentine’s Day is very busy for us.”
In addition to flowers, her shop also has gifts, jewelry, framed photos, and they even sell sandwiches, lattes and other food items. It is also the new location for the Mineral County Chamber of Commerce.