Farmer florist… it’s a thing!

Right?

Where, as the farmer-florist, you walk through your beautiful fields and handpick each stem of flower special for that bride… then you luxuriously sip your coffee and create amazing designs with your own grown blooms…so dreamy…

Okay… you might get a couple stolen minutes to gulp some coffee… then more coffee because you are about to pull an all nighter. Being the farmer and the florist is really tough work. Especially if you are working solo. This is when you begin to really overload your plate.

Florists do floristry full time. Farmers, well (insert manic laughter) farmers work insane hours and it never stops. This is all on top of running your own small business and other product offerings. For five seasons I have juggled it all with help from my husband, Graham, and at times roped in other friends and family members, but for the most part… did it solo. Especially once it came to the floral design duties. When the farming and the florist roles meet, there’s a lot of work to be had! Why do we do this to ourselves? Growing and designing wedding florals can be amazing for the right flower farmer, and can also be incredibly profitable. To have your hands in the process from seed to vase is both enthralling and intimidating. All that aside, for most of us, we signed up for the dream of being a farmer-florist.

Being a farmer-florist is one part of my dream for myself and my flower farm.

…But what if that isn’t your dream?

What if the thought of growing and designing flowers for one of the biggest days of a person’s life is way too much pressure. In fact, what if it’s closer to a nightmare to you? You have no interest in designing flowers or dealing with wedding couples, and dealing with contracts and Pinterest photos make you slightly want to hurl.

Can you still be profitable as a flower farmer?

The answer is yes!

The year 2020 really highlighted that you do not need weddings to be a profitable flower farmer when a majority of weddings were cancelled. Last year showed the ingenuity of flower farmers and the amazing support of their local communities.

Weddings do offer a “higher price per stem” but that is for good reason. There is a lot of work, planning and pressure behind those blooms. Not every flower farmer has an interest in also being a florist, or rather being an event florist and that’s okay.

Last season we had our biggest season yet. We had tripled our sales from the year prior. We also had all our 2020 weddings but one move their date to 2021 and even had one full cancellation. We thought weddings were going to be the bread and butter of the business, but last year that was far from the reality. In total we ended up doing about five micro weddings… which I love micro weddings but sales wise, was a drop in the bucket.

Without weddings… what carried us through?

More importantly, what can make you profitable without taking on the hassle of weddings?

One question we’ve had about our sales from last year and the upcoming potential sales for this season: is it possible to repeat a successful year without weddings when the world is getting back to normal?

Even before the events of 2020, Sierra Flower Farm was minimally financially fueled by weddings and events. We see weddings, since I do love designing with flowers, as a good way to grow the business but we are also not team putting all our petals in one flower girl’s basket. We find diversity, even though it can be a lot of juggling, helps us when building our business by giving us security nets… and then some more security nets.

We had a few different products and sales outlets but our biggest one was one we have been working on building since the inception of Sierra Flower Farm.

Bouquet Subscriptions

What is a bouquet subscription you might ask?

These days I don’t think it takes much explanation as the popularity of this type of sales model has become more mainstream. Thanks to Amazon and every other subscription service, consumers understand the concept readily and in a better way than comparing to a magazine subscription (which was what I used to have to explain it as…).

Just in case you are not familiar with the subscription concept: it is our take on a CSA (Community Supported Agriculture) model. It is where customers are pre-purchasing a certain amount of bouquets during our growing season. We break our bouquet subscriptions into three “seasons”: Spring, Summer and Fall. Spring begins usually mid to late April which launches our bouquet subscription for the year. Each season runs eight consecutive weeks. We give a weekly option, eight bouquets or a bi-weekly option, four bouquets. We open each new seasonal bouquet subscription as the prior one fills up.

The subscription model works for us because we are getting a commitment from our customers up front. No chasing down last minute sales. We know our minimum amount of bouquets that are needed on a given week, which also helps us plan better for extra crops to grow or additional sales outlets/products we would like to take on.

We have offered bouquet subscriptions from year one. It started with a humble amount of customers who put their faith in us as we were still figuring out flower farming life. I think that first year in the entire season we had about ten to fifteen customers in total, and not all at the same time.

The Introduction of a Season Pass

This season we are already at about thirty signups for spring alone, which is where we decided to cap it at since all our last year weddings moved to spring this year. Spring is a tough season in our climate. Most of the spots are filled with our new season pass members. Our Season Pass is for folks who want to hang with us all season long, for twenty four weeks to be exact. Either weekly or every other week.

Last year our seasonal subscriptions kept selling out, it was a mad dash to snag those spots. I am still in awe of that! We received feedback from our loyal subscription members that it was getting a little stressful for them to get a spot as we were opening them for the next subscription period. Our loyal members had never had to compete for a spot before. Last season it was kind of a hot mess, the sales flooded in faster than I could keep up with, and I was overselling subscription periods by accident and then squeezing in our loyal members last minute. It all worked out but it was stressful. In response, we created a season pass for 2021. It is the first year we are offering a full season bouquet subscription, we weren’t sure how it would be received but at this moment it is our top seller.

Bouquet subscriptions saved us in 2020

Last year, the world came to a near stop. We know this. A lot of terrible things happened and we are all still very much in the healing process. There was however, a silver lining to is as well.

We were literally forced to stop and smell the flowers.

Our bouquet subscription season last year, I would say, was one of the more emotional experiences I have had as a flower farmer. From our members: there were tears of joy, tears of thankfulness, tears of loneliness… just lots of tears. The bouquet subscription gave our customers something to look forward to each week. They got to briefly see another human being, this was huge especially for our older members. They also had something new and fresh to enjoy in their homes, that they were stuck in. It created a real bond between us and our members. I know I needed to deliver those flowers to them, emotionally, and our members needed those blooms too. It truly feels we went through some life changing moments together.

In the beginning of the 2020 season we only offered more local subscriptions and did contactless home deliveries. Thankfully, right in time for our summer subscription, small businesses were able to open again. We had pickup spots with local businesses. It was wonderful for us in that it saved us time and it brought attention back to the businesses after them being closed down for a couple months and our members had the added convenience of picking up on their schedule. I love having small business friends who are willing to open up their space for our beloved customers! As small business owners, we are all in this together and I think the customers love seeing the relationship we have in supporting each other, especially during these times.

This year is looking a lot different, yet our subscriptions are more full than they have ever been. This is exciting as more people are coming to realize the specialness of locally grown flowers. A trend that hopefully just continues to go up.

Last season, aside from our bouquet subscription, we also did more every day florist type orders.

Custom Orders

Last season we had a lot more custom orders which is always a fun challenge! These started later in the summer and continued through till the first frost, we also had a small restaurant account where we provided a weekly arrangement. They weren’t as grand as a wedding but they were fairly consistent and added up. Definitely broke up making all those bouquets and allowed for some creativity in design work!

Custom orders can be great. Anything from a last minute mixed bouquet to a something more elaborate. You can have folks pickup or you can deliver. It’s really flexible, and a great way to dip your toes into designing with flowers, if you have an interest, without fully committing to taking on a wedding or other event.

Some advice, be sure to set minimums to make it worth your while. For example, I charge more for the a la carte mixed bouquets than for the bouquets pre-purchased through our subscription. Unless it is an add-on bouquet for a subscription member, then I extend their membership price to them for add-ons.

Sometimes you just have a ton of blooms to move last minute and this next outlet helps with that!

Pop-ups

I love pop-ups! Last minute events is kind of my jam! We did so many in the early years of Sierra Flower Farm that they are nostalgic.

We did a couple casual pop-ups that we were able to quickly put flowers together and drop them off at our local coffee shop. It was amazing they did that, because without the weddings that those flowers were supposed to be for we had a huge influx of blooms. Yay that we hit our target date last season, boo we have to have fingers crossed we can do it for round two haha.

Being able to take the flowers to the coffee shop for those times had an added bonus besides keeping them out of the compost pile. We were able to hit a new market of customers and the flowers found loving homes that weren’t a compost pile. Win-win! Talk to the owners of small shops/coffee shops. See if they are open to that and decide on percentages and such. I loved this particular pop up since it was more of me having flowers on display and not having to be actively selling, the coffee shop handled all that for me and it was pretty sweet.

We also did a more formal pop-up day at the same coffee shop when they hosted a harvest festival. After not working a pop-up stand after a couple years, it was really nice to get back into that again! It was towards the end of the season where people were craving some community happenings so the energy made for just a great day! We had a lot of new customers that had been wanting to meet us, who come out along with some our loyal customers who were happy to catch up after not seeing us. This was a more casual pop-up. We brought buckets of flowers, made the bouquets 100% on site, and set everything up on a couple of tables and a bouquet stand, we just rolled with it! Way less formal than Farmer’s Market and such.

Last October, when the frost just wasn’t coming, we ended up hosting a field pop up with pretty low expectations. We threw a canopy up out in the field with some tables and our flowers and gave it a go. Our property is off the Main Street that runs through our housing development so this helped. We also sent out a last minute email campaign and pushed a little on social media. I had some bouquets pre-made but for the most part we went a little more casual and I would make them on the spot. That field pop-up ended up being our biggest pop up ever and our most profitable one. Without even paying booth rental fees! It was pretty amazing and to be able to really talk to our neighbors was wonderful. Come to find out we inspired many of them to start their own gardens. In the actual ground… something locals here think is rather impossible! Aside from inspiring some with their own gardens we also picked up quite a few new customers. Community is such a powerful thing.

With the uncertainty of 2020 we also offered a new product that I never actually saw myself doing.

Vegetable Share

We pivoted big time.

I had previously said no vegetables… ever.

Then the whole essential versus nonessential businesses happened. In our state, we stayed “essential” as flower growers but across the country there were states that made flower growers nonessential. It was a chaotic time and I was not going to chance it. When the first wave of shutdowns happened we also had a big snow storm hit the mountains which meant… no fresh vegetables. Our family lives off fresh vegetables so that was a situation we never wanted to really experience again. It made us feel vulnerable and helpless. We have ground and knowledge, we can change from feeling powerless to serving our community… so… a vegetable share!

The Vegetable Share was our take on a vegetable CSA where we also offered a flower add-on. Each week we would deliver fresh, nutrient dense vegetables, herbs and flowers to our members using contactless delivery. This was also a nice service for members who still were not comfortable going out to the stores or farmer’s market but still wanted some fresh produce.

Taking on a vegetable share was a new fun challenge and something Graham really got into. After a season of having fresh produce, we’re not going back! Times are still a little shaky and I feel better offering food, and cementing our essential business status along with doing our part to create a some food source independence in our community. Plus… I really fell for those hakurei turnips, yum!

With all that being said, I know you are here for the flowers and that’s still the main thing that keeps us going. We are still a “Flower Farm” but the vegetables keeps us mobile in these uncertain times and gives us that extra peace of mind in knowing that we are going to be able to get our product into our customers hands.

With our fields only being in bloom half of the year we also needed to get creative with other offerings during the off-season.

Holiday Orders and other off-season offerings

We have never had such a successful year in selling holiday offerings as we did last season.

First, it started with our tiny row of pumpkins that I grew because I love pretty pumpkins. I greatly underestimated how that would go… I sold all the pumpkins to my children’s horror, which landed me at a pumpkin patch buying pumpkins for the girls... so this year, more pumpkins need to be planted!

For Thanksgiving/Christmas we offered wreaths, sugar pinecone swags and amaryllis kits. We ended up getting so many wreath orders that I finally got my clamping machine! It was a blast and it looked like my house threw up a forest. These sales really helped us to be able to reinvest in some much needed equipment and begin getting components to build out buildings and a high tunnel, yay! This season seemed to be bigger than past years as loved ones who couldn’t see each other in person for the holidays still wanted to send their love in a unique way.

Valentine’s Day is one of those holidays where as a flower farmer who is committed to using our own product is frustrating. This past year we decided to take a leap and offer hyacinth forcing kits. We had hiccups with getting the bulbs on time, mix up with varieties, etc. It did what we intended, in that it helped give a “now” gift for those gifting bouquet subscriptions but I am not completely sold on doing that again in the future. I think I’d rather have a Sierra Flower Farm swag bag or a hat or something… anything but hyacinth!

Something I have always had a passion for doing is to teach others, or at least share what I know but love being able to do it in person.

Workshops

Workshops are a blast. A lot of upfront work but to help others learn what you do, give them the opportunity to play farmer-florist for a few hours makes for a grand time and is incredibly rewarding!

We have done a couple workshops in the past with success that were at other locations, not on our farm. Being able to chat and demonstrate what it is we do in a more intimate group is something I find so special.

We had plans to do more workshops during the 2020 season but unfortunately other plans were made for us but…

We missed humans!

Towards the end of the season we hosted a small workshop for folks who wanted to learn how to grow and design with cut flowers. It was a wonderful group of ladies and they had fun cutting away in the field. It was the first time we had a workshop at the farm. This was something I had been wanting to do but it’s such a big step to open up your field.

Workshops are essentially a blank page where you can get incredibly creative: wreath making class, flower farming, gardening, arranging, etc. Your imagination is the limit!

Now all these… and I’m sure I am missing some, are the ways we moved our products last season. Many of these we have offered for years. Not sure if it was last year’s events related or we just hit our stride as a business being in year five but it was a successful season.

All without weddings.

Here are some other ideas to move your blooms without growing for weddings

Farmer’s Market
Farmstand
U-Pick
Edible flowers to chefs/herbalists
Dried flowers
Grocery stores/small shops wholesale or on consignment
Business florals
Collaborations with other creatives
Selling to florists (you can grow flowers that work for weddings without having to deal with actual weddings)
Potted plants/flower baskets (great for mother’s day!)
Wholesale
Bulk buckets direct to consumers
Mobile flower truck
Mobile flower bar
Renting your fields for photographers, venue, etc.

Hopefully, if you were worried about making flower farming happening without taking on weddings, this post gives you a boost in confidence and some ideas. Wedding work can be really profitable and a great sales outlet but that does not mean it is everyone’s cup of tea. There are many different ways to sell and package up your beautiful blooms. Have fun with it and get creative! Who knows, maybe in time you will reconsider taking on weddings but if you don’t, you’ll be so busy selling your flowers in other ways!

If you have a way you sell your blooms outside of weddings that I haven’t mentioned or you want to share your story with our flower community, please do in the comment section!

Happy flower farming!

Real Talk: Are weddings needed to be profitable in flower farming?