With Valentine’s Day just 9 days away, it’s safe to say most floral professionals are operating on very little sleep. But there’s one florist who’s decided to officially operate a 24-hour shop: Nic Faitos, owner of Starbright Floral Design in (where else?) New York City—the city that never sleeps.
We caught up with Nic to get some details on this unconventional plan.
F20: How exactly does a 24-hour shop work? Do you have someone in the studio all night long? Or are certain employees on call and orders to the shop get forwarded to their cell phones?
NF: Our goal is to have a team that fully staffs the store, but with fewer employees at night. A designer would stay till midnight and make orders for the next day. He/she would also make a few pre-made (stock) pieces for late night deliveries. There would be no designer after midnight. A person would be here to answer the phone at all hours and would occupy themselves on paperwork and other such projects to make the time productive. We take deliveries of flowers from the airport at night, so this is when flower boxes would be opened, flowers get treated, hydrated and the refrigerator gets cleaned… etc. A delivery person would double as a cleaning person so that if an order comes in, we would be able to deliver it.
F20: When are you instituting this schedule?
NF: We are starting with Valentine’s week and we are going to try this over time a few days here and there. Just testing the waters. The goal is to be 24/7 by Q1 2017.
F20: Okay, now the big question: Why?
NF: The goal is to maximize the use of our real estate. We pay rent to use the space 24 hours a day but we’ve only been using it for 12! Rather than investing in a remote location to accommodate the extra space we need, we can have an overnight team preparing parties and next day orders on an overnight shift.
F20: Do you anticipate getting many middle of the night orders once customers catch on that you’re open all night?
NF: We get some desperate concierges from hotels around midnight who will call and BEG for a delivery. They either forgot to place an order during the day and want us to cover their screw up OR there is some guy that wants to impress someone and flowers do the trick!