Buying flowers and chocolate-covered strawberries will cost you more this Valentine’s Day because business owners are faced with higher wholesale prices.
Mary Thielke, the owner of Bella Flora Flowers in Rocky Hill, thinks football, not flowers was on the minds of many this weekend.
As of Monday morning, she had fewer orders this Valentine’s Day but expects things will recover as the day goes on.
Another challenge is ordering. Thielke said it can be difficult, especially when there are supply shortages.
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“Our costs have gone up. It really varies for flowers. It's going up because there's not enough growers, pickers, truckers, all of the above. The thing that's the hardest for us is getting supplies, vases, plastics or funeral items. Those are the toughest. We're looking at like March, April, May for items we've been waiting, since like December,” said Thielke.
For her customers, Thielke said she should have raised prices by about 30%, but she only increased prices by about 5% in the hopes that her customers will continue to come back next year.
Down the street at Patty Cakes Bakery in Rocky Hill, they too have seen a huge spike in prices.
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“Everything went up; eggs, meat, flour. I mean, every, everything went up and unfortunately, we had to go up on prices,” Patty Fichandler, the owner of Patty Cakes, said.
But they’re preparing for a busy day as they typically do double the business on Valentine’s Day compared to a normal weekday.
“We've been prepared for about a week. Yeah, we do. We do a lot of cake orders for Valentine’s. Our most thing is chocolate-covered strawberries and cakes,” Fichandler said.
The National Retail Federation estimates people will spend about $175 this Valentine’s Day. Time will tell as the day goes on for local business owners.
