Operational Expectations During Coronavirus

by Alyssa Rainville

I don’t think we ever anticipated to cut off flower orders for Mother’s Day five days before the holiday.

We understand how hard it can be to remain distanced from the people you love, and how trying it can be to maintain that distance when a holiday centered on honoring the nurturing figures in your life comes around on the calendar.  It might feel more important than ever to express your feelings by sending flowers and gifts to bring joy.  For potted plant sets, fragrant herbs, dried flower bouquets, and specialty gift sets, our website is stocked and ready for your order!

Ordinarily, we have taken orders for Mother’s Day flowers up through the holiday.  If you know us, capping floral orders for Mother’s Day might sound strange!  However, this departure from operations as normal comes as no surprise to Vault + Vine staff, as work conditions this year are extremely different from years prior.

The pandemic has necessitated changes in our essential processes.  To provide ample space for safe distancing, we’re limiting the amount of staff making flower orders in our production space.  With the same safety parameters in mind, our orders are delivery-only, with consideration for how many deliveries in one day are doable.  Our shop remains closed to the public, and as a result, we’ve invested time into showing more options for flowers, plants, and gifts available for order on our website.  Our café hours are limited, with fewer staff using a new-to-us online ordering portal.

Because we have had to adapt and make so many changes in such a short amount of time, it would be unreasonable to expect that our business as a whole would be unchanged.

Our operations are also affected by the operations of other businesses that we buy from. There is always a limit to the supply of locally grown flowers; in color, variety, or aggregate quantity of stems.  We are excited in our decision to purchase solely from locally flower farmers for our Mother’s Day orders, as this decision aligns our actions with our mission. 

Based out of Australia, a recent caption from the Sustainable Floristry Network’s Instagram account resonates. It reads;

“This period of flux is an opportunity to make do with what we have and to let the materials drive the creative process, not the images. It is a chance to try new combinations and take pride in what our local growers offer – to celebrate fragrance and the power of scent in memory formation, and the extraordinary variety of natural colour and form. This is the time to realise that working with nature, not painting, spraying, devitalising, fumigating, packaging and flying against it, is the way to move forward for a more sustainable, flower-filled future.”

Sustainable Floristry Network [@sustainablefloristrynetwork]. (2020, May 6).

The future of sustainability lies within careful consideration of the connections between ideas, businesses, people, and places.  The comprehensive well-being of these connections may very well be tied to our restraint, rather than constant forward motion for more, more, more.  We connect with not only our farmers and suppliers, but also with you.  We aim to move forward, sustainably and together.