You've Come a Long Way, Baby!

If you're a rose, you've come a long way baby!

Especially considering that over 80% of flowers purchased in North America come from South America.

That's a long way to travel, for a huge number of flowers!

Let's examine how a rose gets shipped from the farm to your home.

First, the blooms are cut at the farm level in Colombia. Each individual stem is manually cut; pruned from the bush one at a time. They are then bundled into groups of 25 stems, 10 bundles per box for a total of 250 stems per box.

Each box is then trucked to the airport in Bogota. The planes are loaded with 2200 boxes or 550,000 stems, for shipment to Miami. And that's just one plane...they come into Miami about once every hour.

Once arriving in the U.S., the boxes are then inspected to ensure the contents actually contain flowers...no "extras" (remember what Colombia is known for?)

The boxes are then trucked to local Miami warehouses, and segregated with boxes of other flowers for trans-continental shipment. Roses from Colombia, carnations from Ecuador, leather leaf from Costa Rica, and hundreds of other types of flowers loaded into refrigerated semi-trailers.

Then the real trip begins...

 

According to Google Maps, the trip from Miami to Vancouver should take over 56 hours driving non-stop.

 That's less than 3 days...but who is going to drive continuously for that long?

It takes two drivers, each driving 12 hour shifts while the other is snoozing in the sleeper compartment. Not an easy way to make a living!

From Miami to Atlanta, to St. Louis, to Kansas City, to Salt Lake City, up to Seattle and finally with flower delivery in Vancouver at a local wholesaler. It's pretty easy for local florists in Surrey, New Westminster, Burnaby, Langley, White Rock, Richmond, North Vancouver & West Vancouver to pick up their roses.

But often the trip doesn't end in Greater Vancouver, as local couriers must then pick-up and deliver to Victoria, Kelowna, Castlegar, Prince George, and even Prince Rupert which can add another travel day.

Let's say your roses have finally arrived at Simon Says Roses Florists in Victoria.

Now what happens?

Well, the "fun" has just begun to get your blooms into shape for retail sale.

Check out our next blog entry for flower processing done by a professional florist.

Top 8 Perils of a Canadian Florist

 

As Canadian florists, delivering flowers can at times be somewhat of a miracle.

We're professionals. We know what we're doing...most florists in Canada have been doing deliveries for years...delivering hundreds if not thousands of orders each year.




But flower delivery in Canada poses some unique perils, such as:

1. It's often cold here. Sometimes very cold. Imagine delivering flowers in Canada when it's minus 20 outside. Layers and layers of wrapping...and a delivery driver that can run quickly are very helpful!
2. It's windy. All too often we get requests to leave flowers at the door. That can work if there is shelter, but left out in the wind, there can be petals flying everywhere by the time the recipient comes home.
3. We have deer...lots of deer. Once again, leaving things at the door usually isn't the answer. We MUCH prefer hand-delivery of flowers to the recipient, otherwise Bambi may be having a lunch of flowers before you receive the gift.
4. Dogs. Dogs are wonderful animals...most of the time. Not so wonderful when they use a gift as their personal washroom, however. Cats too, for that matter. Enough said.
5. Transportation. Gas costs money. Lots of money. The majority of flowers consumed in Canada come from South America. For example, flowers are flown from Bogota to Miami, then trucked from Miami to Vancouver, and trucked again from Vancouver to Victoria. And then we have the local delivery service. That's a lot of gas!
6. The "don't call first" request. We get requests not to call the recipient ahead of time. But if the recipient leaves work early, and isn't coming back for three days, now what happens? We were told to deliver, and we do. But the flowers sit on her desk until she returns to work. Not good.
7. Much of our country is still rural. Can you imagine delivering to Township Road 254, Site 3, Comp 4, RR 3 in Spruce Grove, Alberta? Without a telephone number?  We're good, but we're not that good. The local florist may know a lot of people, but sometimes the driver needs directions. Please have that phone number handy.
8. Another rural dilemna is the Post Office Box. A P.O. Box is fine if we're mailing a parcel. Not going to work when we're delivering flowers. We need the physical street address, or at least a phone number to call for directions.

So next time when you have an order going out for delivery, remember your local florist.

We're doing the best that we can!