Apple Blossom Floral owner gives credit to her crew
Posted on 08. Feb, 2010 by yvettedavis in News
by Yvette Davis
EAST WENATCHEE — Jeanne Davis, owner of Apple Blossom Floral, attributes her WBJ Readers’ Choice award for Best Florist to her crew.
They treat every bouquet as a unique work of art and are good at drawing out of customers what they really want, she said. On top of that, though, each crew member has to be sensitive to each customer’s feelings. The customer could walk in the door in a high note planning a wedding, or on a bad day planning a funeral.
No matter what the situation, the designers and delivery crew must respond appropriately.
“Someone that cares is the primary thing. About the quality of the product and about the customer’s event. Even the delivery person has to care. Delivering flowers is not like delivering UPS because something is going on in their life. You have to be sensitive and be able to switch gears quickly. In addition, we might do 40 bouquets a day but that might be the only bouquet those people have ever received,” Davis said.
Davis currently has five employees and is gearing up for the busiest of floral holidays — Valentine’s Day. Davis said the holiday takes six weeks of preparation for one month’s worth of work delivered in a single day. After that comes Easter Sunday and Mother’s Day, with more holidays sprinkled in between.
But in reality, floral is a non-stop business, she said, and it takes a little bit of insanity to do it.
Davis, who added that Apple Blossom Floral’s “mission statement” is to make people happy, pay the bills and have fun, started in the business 22 years ago.
She worked at Kashmir Gardens, Milot-Mills and Floral Designs By The Tumbleweed before opening her own flower shop in 1988.
Her first shop on Grant Road was only 200 square feet. Her second, 800 square feet which later expanded to 1,500 square feet on Eastmont Ave. Five years after that, Davis knew she wanted to buy. Sherry Trammel from Laura Mounter Real Estate helped her find her current 3,000 square foot location at 192 9th St. N.E., East Wenatchee, which she purchased in 1995. Her husband Troy Stephens of Stephens Twin Construction remodeled it for her.
And she’s been busy ever since. Davis said the advent of online floral sellers like 1-800-Flowers has kept her on her toes. She stays up with current trends and is working on a new Web site to be completed this year.
Still, she doesn’t believe that people can get the same service online as they do walking into her shop. Plus, she works closely with other local businesses such as Busy Bea’s Cakes in Cashmere that make Wenatchee a great place to get married, she said.
“People are lucky to get married in the Wenatchee Valley because everybody here cares. We are big enough to be cutting edge but small enough to be personal,” she said.
Runners up for the Best Florist category were, Bloomer’s, Kunz Floral, and the Wenatchee Safeway store. The Best Florist category was a new category for the Readers’ Choice Awards.
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