You may think that we admire our stock and create beautiful flower arrangements every day (and we do!) but there is a lot more to being a retail florist. While our jobs may seem glamorous, there is a lot of hard work by our team that goes unnoticed. Our shop has been open and providing fresh flower arrangements for delivery around Ireland and in our florist in Blanchardstown for over 25 years so we must be doing something right! Here’s a day in the life of a local Irish florist.
What does a retail florist do?
Retail floristry used to be the only place to work for trained commercial florists. The high street was the only way to get flowers for your wedding, funeral, celebrations and more. The past 20 years have seen a huge change in the landscape of retail floristry with many of our orders coming from our website or digital enquiries and more competitors specialising in niche floristry compared to a broader scope of the traditional florist. Retail florists deal with a range of emotions each day from our customers ranging from joy to despair and everything in between, and it's our job to cater to everything.
A Day in the Life at Belles Fleurs
We start many of our days with a fresh delivery of flowers which will usually be in boxes or buckets. We unpack these carefully, treat and condition them and display them in fresh clean buckets of water.
We spend the afternoon preparing designs, wreaths, and bouquets for our in-person customers who drop into our florist in Blanchardstown shopping centre throughout the day. We prepare bouquets for all occasions in case we have customers dropping in on their way to a funeral or to greet a newborn baby.
We move on to preparing our orders for the day that may have come in online via our online florist, via email or by phone. We arrange our collections and deliveries for these orders as soon as they’re complete, so each flower arrangement arrives as fresh as possible.
We take photos and videos of our creations to post on social media so our customers can see what they have to look forward to! We also spend time in in-house admin like replying to emails, preparing staff rosters, preparing sundries for special occasions like Valentine's and Christmas, training new staff in-house or upskilling our team.
We monitor and care for the plants and flowers in store rotating stock to ensure fresh bouquets and low waste. We spend a lot of time cleaning and sterilising our work areas and buckets. We sort our waste and compost as much as possible. We refresh our window stock and arrange our displays, adjusting prices as needed.
We consult with customers via email or phone or help customers in-store to choose the perfect arrangement for their occasion. We check our stock and order flowers from our wholesalers in advance for the following day's orders. We spend some time accounting and bookkeeping and browsing social media for new ideas, events, or upskilling courses we can attend.
After a long day, we close our doors and dream of flowers until we open up again the next day! It’s a busy life in our Blanchardstown Florist but we wouldn’t change a thing. Order your flowers online or drop into Belles Fleurs to see the magic happen.
