Mother's Day

Local Companies Prep for Sales of Flowers, Chocolates for Mother's Day

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Flowers and chocolates are plentiful this weekend for Mother’s Day, but it took months of preparations.

The owners of House of Flora, a florist in Hartford, started prepping just after Valentine’s Day for this marathon Mother’s Day weekend.

“Demand is high. There's nothing like fresh flowers to give your mom every Mother's Day,” said Tracy Brancifort, from House of Flora.

They have a roses, flower boxes, assorted arrangements, balloons and plants for sale.

“Red roses for mom and a love for their wife as well. It's a go on flowers,” said Richard Brancifort, the owner of House of Flora.

For the last two years, they sold primarily out of a tent outside during the pandemic and, because it was so successful, they plan to do it again this year.

Unfortunately, the cost for flowers has increased dramatically because of supply issues. Brancifort estimates nearly 30 to 40%.

“Getting your orders in early and then watching your orders disintegrate because of labor problems, not only in Connecticut but in South America, Ecuador, transportation. Our price of flowers has risen a lot because of transportation,” said Brancifort.

At Thompson Chocolate in Meriden, one of America’s oldest chocolate factories, they start preparing four to six months ahead of holidays.  

“We have a lot of our employees working year-round, producing annually, just about two million pounds of chocolate, very much for different seasons,” said Kevin Scarpati, the sales and marketing manager at Thompson Chocolate.

In the retail store, Thompson Chocolate has gift baskets and heart- shaped chocolates for moms.

But in the factory, employees are already making chocolate cigars for Father’s Day.

“We are starting with large bricks of chocolate that are melting down in 3,000-5,000 pound melting tanks. We're melting that and then we're tempering it at a slightly cooler temperature. And then we're depositing it into a variety of molds, whatever the shape is that we're going to be molding, then it gets cooled, what's called de-molded, foiled and then packaged,” said Scarpati.

They’re also hand wrapping chocolate turkeys in foil for Thanksgiving and molding other specialty items like poker chips.

It all then gets boxed up and shipped out across the U.S. for you to gift or enjoy.

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