Between the labor costs and the actual price of flowers and vases, the journey of a rose from farm to countertop is an expensive one that is “largely invisible to the consumer,” says Kate Penn, the CEO of the Society of American Florists. On Valentine’s Day, which makes up 30% of flower sales for the entire year, according to 2019 data by the IPSOS Floral Tracking Study, these costs only get higher due to demand.
“At Valentine’s Day in particular, the demand for roses is exponentially higher than any other day of the year, so that means an exponential increase in labor is needed to make that happen, which is why roses at Valentine’s Day are higher than other days of the year,” Penn says.
‘You’re sort of paying for a plane ticket for flowers’ With roses, specifically, consumers don’t see how much work goes into developing a bloom that is commercially viable and “promises rich, pigmented color, a beautiful opening, and a long vase life,” Penn says.
″Consumers don’t see the labor that goes into growing a rose plant,” she says. “The weeks and months of monitoring the plant, ensuring it has the proper nutrition, is protected from insects and diseases, is harvested at the proper time, and put in the proper conditions and solutions that will allow it to be shipped to the retailer.”
A majority of flowers you see in the United States, including roses, are imported, says Frank Montabon, a professor of supply chain management at the University of Iowa. “We get a heck of a lot of flowers from South America or Colombia, and you got a really tight window to get those flowers from there to the U.S.,” he says. “Generally you have two weeks at most, which, at the risk of over-simplifying, Colombia is far away. “Yes, those things go on airplanes and they keep them refrigerated the whole time and all that, but that’s really not a lot of time to go from the field to either a wedding or a Valentine’s Day dinner.”
Read the complete article at www.grow.acorns.com.