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Are you ready to grow your floral business not only in profits but in creativity and fulfillment? Listen as Jeni Becht a wedding and event designer of over 25 years shares all the juicy details of growing and evolving her floral business into one of passion, purpose, and financial freedom. She shares all the secrets with actionable tips and strategies so you can wake up inspired and on a path to profitability while feeling lighter and more aligned in work and life. Join Jeni in building your business while ditching the overwhelm, avoiding burnout, and feeling fulfilled in work and life.
Hello, Floral Friends. This is Jen, and you are listening to the Floral Hustle Podcast. On this week's episode, I want to talk about recipe and ordering simplification. And I want to teach you two of my fundamental systems that will help you simplify your ordering and will also help you simplify pricing.
And these are two of the things that I teach you in my new floral foundations, florist foundations course, this course teaches you from like everything from starting your business to making sure that you can deliver and execute a event. And it is. the most comprehensive course I think on the market. And so if you haven't checked it out yet, this is content that is in that course.
Um, but you can check it out at thefloralhustle. com forward slash foundation. My first process is Simplifying how I even formulate the flowers that I'm going to use. Um, so actually we're going to talk about three systems because I think part of one comes into this first one. When I am figuring out the product that I use, I am not just like going, okay, here is the million different flower options.
And, uh, what do I want to use? I think of it as layers. And these layers apply to when you're making bridal bouquets, when you're making centerpieces, and when you are making potentially like arches or things like that. So the first thing, the first layer to me, and I am someone who loves big lush bouquets, denser bouquets that have a little bit of movement in them, have a little bit of movement, like using greens, using line flowers, uh, also have a good amount of texture.
And so I start out with my base flower, which I call my, like, it's my big blooms or my focal blooms. So in my big blooms or focal blooms, I could be using something that probably is going to fill about four ish inches. And with that four inches of space, um, that could be a rose. That could be a dahlia, that could be a pink cushioned protea, that could be a peony.
Anything that is, like, about that space constitutes that type of bloom choice. So that's my first, because whenever I create an arrangement or I'm creating a bouquet, I'm using that as like my fundamental kind of shape starting of my bouquet. So the next thing is line flowers. You don't always have to use a line flower, but it does help for one like light blue delphinium.
There's just not a lot of light blue flowers out there. So it gets thrown into that mix because of being that color and not having a lot of those color choices. But you can also have stock, larkspur, you can have a silby, you could have um, snapdragons, sweet peas, like those are line flowers that help create movement but also just add a little bit of dimension and different texture in your bouquet.
So that's your second foundational type of bloom. You don't always need to have that bloom in there, the line flower, but I, I think it does add a lot of visual interest to your, your pieces. Then third bloom choice is what I call secondary or transition blooms. So secondary bloom choices could be spray roses, anything that you will have kind of interspersed with your big blooms and your line flowers in kind of the meat of your bouquet.
That also could be scabiosa. It could be straw flower. It could be I mean, there's a million different options, um, but they're going to be a different size. Probably anywhere from half to three quarters of the size of your big or focal bloom. Then from there, you could have, um, a filler flower. So filler flowers to me also, I love using fillers because I think it adds texture.
I think it adds another dynamic from a bloom size. Uh, so Queen Anne's Lace could be also, um, you know, I use Waxflower a lot. Calcinia, when Calcinia is on point, like, my favorite. I, I love, especially, like, near fall, there's a little Calcinia Flush. Um, Boronia Heather. I mean, there's just so many great filler flowers.
I, and I love, like, Roman Chamomile or Feverview. Like, that is a great. filler, especially because citrus bouquets are right now are really hot, like citrus inspired and citrus colored. So that adds a little bit of different texture, a little bit of shape. So right now we have focal blooms or big blooms. We have secondary transition.
We have lionflowers and we have billow. Then from there I have greenery. I like to use greenery around the cuff and then usually just a little bit of spurts inside the bouquet. And those could be Italian ruscus, Israeli ruscus, your eucalyptus. Thank God, like to me eucalyptus is kind of phased out a little bit.
Thank God you. Um, you know, things like rich greens or the, the sagey greens, and that just adds a little bit more texture and also sometimes helps with costs because sometimes greenery is less obviously tallied ruscus, at least around here, not so much, but, um, my new favorite green, uh, is called pistachio and that is just really beautiful.
And, um, I ordered that off of Hollux, which is a Dutch online auction. Then, from there, we have our dancing flowers. So, I like to have blooms a little bit outside of the core that create a little bit of movement and normally those are potentially, uh, ranunculus, butterfly ranunculus, scabiosa, um, could be lisianthus depending on, especially if it's locally grown.
Locally grown lisi is usually beautiful and can have that nice movement. So, those are my six foundational type blooms, but when it comes to centerpieces and to, um, arch pieces or, you know, something like that, some type of installation piece, I add a coverage bloom, which to me is Normally hydrangeas, especially in the cultural weddings that I do, hydrangeas are used a lot.
And so white hydrangeas from South America, blue hydrangeas, purple, um, is a new color that's coming out of South America. I normally also order those on some type of auction site because they just, you buy a box and you get them down to under 2 a piece usually. Um, all the way down to like 1. 65, which for a five inch bloom to me is a pretty good value.
So those just help cover mechanics. Uh, they also create a level of lushness because you're layering your flowers over and that layer is, is really just creating this illusion of more flowers when you have your kind of base covered in a flower, even though it's a bigger, thicker, denser flower. So that is my one system of figuring out like what I use.
Then my next system is I often price out things per square foot. I can price out installations. I can price out, um, even centerpieces in a square foot type situation. So let's just say we are having a cake install. And this cake install has flowers kind of swooping down and around a cake. I actually just went through this exercise with my mastermind girls, um, because we're, our, our focus this month is all about, um, ordering recipes, pricing, and pricing for profit.
And we're going through and we're figuring this, you know, what, what we need to order for this cake installation for the upcoming um, installation Rockstar Workshop that is in Minneapolis on May 14th. And it's going to be like this kind of swoop of flowers that's going around a low top cocktail table and then it's landing on the floor.
So first thing I do is I always figure out like my mechanics And with that, like, because it's going to be attaching to the wall, I, you know, thought, okay, I can put a cage and this is a eco venue, so I can't use flour, flour, foam there. So it's going to have a cage with fiber floral, which is my go to mechanic.
If I need something that has, um, like a foam, like ability, but it's sustainable then with chicken wire coming down, and then it's going to spill into a floor piece that has the fiber floral in it. And so I'm going through and I'm figuring out in one square foot I want the piece to be 12 inches wide. In one square foot I want to put probably like nine carnations for coverage.
I want to put um, Let's just say like seven roses. I want to put some base greenery. I want to put some purple wax flower. So I'm like building my recipe of items based on that one square foot. So for me to fill that one square foot of coverage of this installation, then I go to my next step and figure out how many square feet are in the installation.
So if from the table height down, Is let's just say 36 inches and then I want to go on to the floor so right there just from the table height of the cake down. I have if I want to come a foot out, I have 4 square feet of installation. Then I need to go back and attach the wall. I'm probably going to have another four feet plus a foot on the actual wall.
Then, because there's going to be a little bit of a curve, I want to give a little bit of buffer. So I probably, with this installation, need twelve, at least, twelve square feet. So I take my base recipe, my flowers, and I think that came out to, when we figured out the math in the mastermind, it was 56 in wholesale cost of the product.
Then I times that by my markup. So if you were at a three to four times markup, you times it by your markup. Then you add your labor percentage. And then from there, You add your costs, basically whatever your markup on your hard goods is. So if you're using a couple cages, if you're using chicken wire, um, I would figure out like an average cost per square foot.
So I just added 20 per square foot for mechanics. And it came out to that each square, Like square foot of this installation cost about 200 and I think it was 245 dollars with markup and your design fee. And then I had to take that times my total square foot, which I think I landed on 14. So with that, that installation starting out with 56 of product, I just take that in times and plan for that product.
for however many square feet that I need. So that becomes my recipe. So I priced it and I planned a recipe in a very easy 12 by 12 foot square. If this is something that has, I call them floral moments, then I can either build an average of those, like this one I'm going to put some hanging amaranthus in, and I want to use some phalaenopsis orchids, but I only want to use like five phalaenopsis orchids.
So I just put in a budget towards phalaenopsis orchids. And so I'm going to put five, but I'm going to build in because I can buy them on a plant. I usually buy my orchids on plants, 17. 50 for two stems. And so I built that into my recipe and took like, okay, if I'm using five, I probably even could just plan for six because I need 14 square feet.
So I'm, I'm estimating like from the ordering on the more moment type items, but I'm becoming faster at my, my estimating. And then if I need to put a little further thought into it, when I'm placing my final order. I can polish my order from there, but I didn't spend a ton of time like questioning myself, questioning if I'm doing this right.
I spent time getting my estimate out faster, which honestly I think is more impactful. Those are my two processes, but here's what I hear a lot from, from, uh, people that I coach or people in Facebook groups. I keep overspending and you need to build fun into your business. So this is my third kind of thing or process that I incorporate in my business.
I plan for buying fun flowers. I do not pre order 100 percent of my order because then like you're just, you're ripping the fun out of going into the cooler and finding your unicorn flowers as I call them. So I am building it so that when I go in, I have an allotted budget that I get to spend on fun. I have an allotted budget that I can spend on.
On unicorn flowers on whatever. But here's how I do it. I when I'm going through the ordering process with my six or seven floral layers, depending on the piece that you're making, I might have some staples that I'm like, hey, I need like blue delphinium or I need butterfly ranunculus or I need something specific.
But then I go through and I'll pick one of the types of flowers. So my secondary blooms. Or my, like, if I have some really nice, um, roses that I'm ordering from my rose farm direct in Ecuador, that I maybe want some peonies. So I'm going to plan for less of those big blooms, but plan that I'm going to source or find maybe some locally grown dahlias, or I'm going to find some locally grown peonies or something that is in that category.
So I take a category and figure out there's where my fun is. And if for some reason, like, that fun doesn't work out, you probably always got the staples in the cooler. To fill the gap anyway, but at least then you're going into it, knowing that you get to have some fun buying flowers that inspire you.
Because if you're not doing that, like, I think my designs are so much more inspiring when I get to have a little bit fun. Buying finding a little bit of hunting. I use hollocks and we'll go and hunt in color palettes for that wedding and see if I can find something. And that's how I found pistachio, the green that I mentioned earlier.
That's not fun, but I went in and search greens and just. I sometimes see something, and I'm like, I have no idea what that is. And I love experimenting, so I'm going to order it. And with ordering it, I'm, you know, I'm testing it, but I'm only ordering like 50 cents. So it's not like, even if I don't like it, it's not the end of the world.
But I'm experimenting, I'm learning, I'm growing. And that's what's important. So this is the type of content. And I keep talking about the course, like in the last few weeks, because I just know how impactful I see the mastermind girls that are like lights go off when I go through these types of things.
And I know how impactful they are to my business. And I mean, I run a, I think my business is like 325, 000 with part time childcare. I mean, I'm not, I'm doing two different businesses, the coaching business in that. And I did that with having foundational systems. And so that's why I call it florist foundations, because those foundational systems and practices help me do more.
They help me be more productive. They help me. Not be like just running around with my head cut off trying to figure out what to do. I just, I have a process for interacting with clients. I have a process for planning all my estimates. I have a process for ordering. All of those things are things you can just have that foundational practice, integrate in your business, and it helps you scale.
And I mean, my business is scaled. I'm running this out of my, my garage based studio. And that can be you too. There is so much opportunity out there. And being a business owner is something that can be so fulfilling and doesn't need to be like these golden handcuffs that you're just like, Oh, I just can't anymore.
So I've, I've, I've coached those business owners too. They're just like, I just, I'm so stressed out because they don't have processes. They're manually doing all these things all the time and then wondering why they're not making any money. I hope these three little tidbits help you this coming wedding season.
And thank you so much for listening flower friend and you have an amazing flower filled week.