Valentine’s Day is florists’ biggest test

Published 10:24 pm Wednesday, February 13, 2008

Here’s a word to the wise:

If you haven’t ordered a bouquet for your sweetie before noon today, don’t bother. It’s too late.

And here’s another suggestion:

If your loved one works in the flower industry, don’t assume you’re off the hook. He or she probably still wants a special delivery of fragrant blooms.

“I think most of our spouses think we don’t want them because we’re standing here making bouquets all day,” said Dana Mulligan, a floral designer at Cascade Wholesale, the bouquet staging center for Stadium Flowers in Everett. “But I would love to get flowers.”

This week, Mulligan, a 20-year veteran of the flower industry, spent countless hours standing at a long, counter-height table covered with flower-filled vases. In less frenetic times, Mulligan can create one “Romance” bouquet, a pink-and-red concoction of gerbera daisies, carnations and, of course, roses, in about 15 minutes.

To prepare for the Valentine’s Day rush, Mulligan and her team set up a production line that churns out 25 bouquets in about 25 minutes.

This week, speed is of the essence.

“It’s all so time-sensitive,” Mulligan said. “If you don’t have the flowers to a business by 3 p.m. the day of, you’re probably too late, because you don’t know when that person is going home.”

Every florist’s nightmare, she said, is to have to deliver flowers in the evening or later.

“You can’t deliver at 10 p.m.,” Mulligan said. “That will ruin their Valentine’s Day.”

For the annual day of love, Cascade Wholesale is providing bouquets and cut flowers to more than 60 different businesses, including large grocery chains such as Haggen Food and Pharmacy, said Adam Van Winkle, general manager of the family-owned business. There are two Stadium Flower stores, and a call center at the warehouse takes individual delivery orders.

Drivers from Cascade Wholesale are already scheduled to make 1,400 deliveries on Valentine’s Day.

“We’re doing 1,000 dozens of roses, and that’s just in the vases,” Van Winkle said.

Thousands more roses are needed to fill out bouquets like “Butterfly Love,” a collection of pink flowers jeweled with foliage and a paper-thin faux butterfly.

The flowers are coming on planes from South America and California, and on trucks navigating mountain pass roads that recently have been closed because of avalanches. When the passes open, even temporarily, the trucks tend to show up at all hours of the day and night, Van Winkle said.

Crews unload the boxes, then the trucks head out for more.

A team of high school students, hired just for this special season of love, strips long-stemmed roses of their thorns, and sometimes a stem snaps right off.

“We have to move every single rose,” Mulligan said, hoisting a low tub stuffed with short-stemmed roses. “There’s hundreds of dollars of flowers in there.”

Those roses are bunched into small, fish-bowl shaped ceramic containers, such as “Heart Stopper,” a small bouquet for $29.98, or into bud vases, such as “Lil’ Romance,” for $24.98.

Mulligan arranged two dozen short-stemmed blooms into a white, cherub-flanked bowl.

“That will be $89.98,” she said. “When a dozen long-stemmed roses is $85, this is a great value.”

Cascade Wholesale, like so many purveyors of Valentine’s Day bouquets, offered incentives to cajole customers into having their deliveries made a day or two early. For those who believe every day – even the day before Valentine’s Day — is a day for love, a box of chocolate truffles accompanied the flowers.

Still, the best view is reserved for the florists.

“The day before Valentine’s Day is the most beautiful site,” Mulligan said. “This place is filled with thousands of bouquets. They’re all ready to go, waiting.”