The Floral Hustle

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Hello flower friends. This is Jen, and I'm going to talk to you about my easy peasy way to do estimates, to figure out recipes, and that is using base recipe pricing and basically like just making this foundational. Type of recipe of how you make bridal bouquets, how you make compos, how you make whatever.

And with that, taking that base recipe and then tweaking it and molding it to be specific to your situation. So let's just say that we are making a bridal bouquet. We've had episodes where we've talked about foundational blooms and kind of like the design layers that I build recipes within and kind of order product within and those floral layers or floral, um. kind of elements are a foundational bloom, which is your big, bulky bloom that's going to fill up the majority of your kind of size, the shape really the volume in your bouquet. Then you have transitionary blooms and transitionary blooms, to me, are something that is not as big as your, big.

Bodacious bloom, that's filling your space, your foundation bloom. This is a white MAA spray rose, or depending on how you're using it, Lizzie Anthis or some type of clustery or smaller bloom that you're not using as a dancing flower. The third element or layer is a line flower. So like a stock, a larks spur, a delphinium you could use fox, love anything that's has that nice line that can create movement and shape in your bouquet.

Then the next is filler, so that could be Queen Ann's lace, wax, flower, baby's breath, a million of those different type of really small clustery. Then you have your dancers occulous. Scoliosis, Lizzie Anthos, potentially butterfly, Oculus, anything that you're showing off and when you're putting in your bouquet, you're getting that bounce or movement in your bouquet from that flower, it's usually jetting out three to four inches even sometimes, and it helps just give that kind of light and airy feeling, and often we'll make your bouquets look more expensive.

All right, then after that. We have our greenery. That could be, you know, variated PIs, it could be Ruscus, it could be, Saal, it could be any type of greenery. Then you have a, what I call like a coverage bloom, and I often use coverage blooms in my cages and I use them often in my composts. So that could be hydrangeas, carnations that are clustered together.

Anything that's kind of big and fills space, then. There is the drippy flowers, so that could be anything like some type of vine. I personally love, love a puff vine. It is one of my favorites. I also love using amaranthus hanging amaranthus. That is a great drippy drapey flower, Jasmine vine.

Absolutely beautiful. So anything passion, flower vine, that is going to create that drippy kind of movement in your bouquets. And when you kind of just stay within like these layers when you're thinking about it, often foundationally like a bouquet is going to have, a foundation or a big bloom.

It's going to. Have a coverage bloom, a green, and potentially like a filler flower. Those four blooms could pretty much make any bridal bouquet and you could even simplify it more and just do roses and take a transition, bloom out. I do think that they're more visually interesting when you want to uplevel your bouquet a little bit more.

I definitely would add a dancer. I think dancers really. Elevate your bouquet, elevate your work and are, often more expensive type blooms. So that definitely is elevating the price point. I think you can easily, I. When you're estimating, and that's what I'm talking about, these base recipes. So if I'm building an a la carte flowers program, or if I'm building at, starting at pricing I feel like so many florists are spinning their wheels, spending so much time and energy on making.

A estimate or figuring out pricing that if you just figured out this foundation of base recipes and base pricing. For one, you could add immense pricing transparency in your business because you have starting at pricing that you can put in a brochure, you can put on your website, like you can make a bouquet for this.

Starting at pricing, my starting at pricing is like usually 17 roses for a bridal bouquet. A third ish to almost a half a bunch depending on the filler flower. I'm usually in a bridal bouquet, gonna use five transition blooms and I will use about, depending on if it's Israeli ruscus, I'm using half a bunch.

Or if it is like Variated PIs probably gonna use a third of a bunch because it's, you know, especially branchy. And I'm able to get a lot out of that. So if I think of. How I easily just chose those transition blooms that greenery, that filler flour, that big bloom, I can go into that base recipe pricing.

I, for a dollar 65, I. Can get a very wide range of roses. I can order from my favorite rose farm in Ecuador, Bellevue, and I can get the most beautiful Quicksands playa Blancas for that. I can get pink expression, candy expression, all of the garish look candlelight roses. And then even less I can get ocean songs.

I can get cool waters. I can get a pink Mondale. Then they also carry Pink O'Hare. White O'Hare. So if in my equation I wanna use maybe a less expensive, foundation rose, and then maybe use three to five of those higher end, I average out my budget to a dollar 65. I can pretty much. Staying away from David Austin Garden, roses easily be in my market around a dollar 65 for an average.

I for an event three weeks ago, got roses down to 45 and 65 cents. So if I'm budgeting, when I'm budgeting things, a dollar 65 like I am golden, I, I easily will have room in my budget then. I'm looking at my budget for white maass. Let's just say that I'm choosing that as my transition blue. I usually can easily find white maass that don't suck for 1799 for a 10 stem bunch.

So if I'm using five stems of that, I have nine divided by two. So I easily can just say, okay, if I have $18, I'm using $9 of white maass. Then filler flour, let's just say we have a budget depending on what we're using or buying. Let's just say half a bunch so that we are estimating high. So I'll just say that we're buying something for 1199 'cause I should be able to get a filler flower.

From anywhere from 8 99 to 13 to 1499. So if I use an average, let's just say 1299 or 13, let's say 1399, and I'm using half a bunch, so I'm gonna budget $7 in my base recipe pricing. So I have my $9 of spray roses, I have my $7, let's just say. Of my transition and fillers. So like, we're currently around $16, so then I am going to take my roses and I'm at 28.

So then if I add my 17, I think that's what it was. It was nine plus seven. So 14. Yep. Actually 16.

Just doing a little math. Okay, so I, right now I'm at $44 and 5 cents of base recipe pricing. Then if I take an add, let's just say for a greenery, I'm gonna add $4. That should get me a half a bunch. The majority of greens that I normally use, if I use pistachio, I can sometimes get those beautiful bunches down to like $5 a bunch.

So I am at $48. So if I am using that as my foundational recipe. And I have $48 of product, I could potentially use less. 'cause if my roses are really big and banging, I might not need to use 17. I might not need to use half a bunch of greens. I might not need to use half a bunch of filler, but I estimated high.

Because I would rather estimate a little bit high in my base recipe pricing and make sure that I'm covered and I'm not selling myself short. So if five have $48 of product, and I'm gonna take that depending on what your markup structure is, times three, I'm at $144. If I'm timesing it by three, if I have three times markup, I'm at 144.

If I did four times markup, obviously I'm gonna add another $48 and I'm gonna be at 1 92. So let's just say that we were at three times markup. You do you, whatever that is. I'm at 1 44. I need to add, if I am not getting my vase back, I need to make sure that I'm covering the cost of my vase. If it is a bridesmaid bouquet, I use the dollar tree cylinder.

So I am budgeting in there. It's a dollar 25 for me to buy it, so I double that cost. So I would add in two 50. If it is, I usually use for my bride bouquets five inch wide, eight inch tall CI cylinder VAs, and those cost $7. So I need to make sure that I have, I'm doubling the cost of my supplies. Some people triple them.

It's, again, you do, you, everybody has a different way to run their business in different profit margins. So I'm gonna add $14. Okay, so I'm at 1 58. Then I need to add my labor percentage. One of the biggest things that I run into is often floors think the labor charge is the setup and delivery charge that is completely separate.

This labor charge is for the labor to process those flowers to make your bridal bouquet. To change the water and trim the stems of that bridal bouquet before you go to deliver it. So with $158, I am going to just guess you have a labor percentage of 25%. I have seen florist with all the florist I've coached go from 20 all the way to 50% labor.

So let's just say 25. So I'm going to times my 1 58 times one. Point two five 'cause that is adding my 25%. So that gets me to 1 97 and 50 Oh shit. And 50. Pennies. Yep. I'm sorry. I was re-looking at it and it is 1 97 50, so if I was doing 1 97 50, I could just quote 1 97 50 as my base recipe pricing. If you also, you probably should add in a little bit of money for ribbon and pins.

So I think we could just make this 1 99 to make it easy. So your base recipe price is 1 99. That means that you can spend $44 on product, or $48, sorry, $48 on product, and you can spend $7 on your vase and let's just say a dollar 50 or whatever. Ribbon. And so as long as you are picking blooms within that budget, that will make your bridal bouquet like your standard issue bridal bouquet.

That is your base recipe pricing and your base recipe flowers. Now here's where this makes quoting recipes very easy. I am not a person who likes to reinvent the wheel, reinvent the recipe, reinvent the type of. Of stuff that I'm making all the time. Reinvention is time consuming from a creation standpoint, from a managing a team standpoint because you're having to teach them how to do new things and from a standpoint of like building these recipes and estimates.

I kind of make things similar to each other, but maybe I'm switching out a few things or adding a few things. So if I was doing an estimate and somebody showed me a bouquet that's got all of these different roses in it, but then has stuck and then has Queen ans lace and then has oculus. Okay, so if I'm adding stock.

I might not need 17 roses, so I would probably go down to, let's just say 15 roses. So I take off, um, it is, I believe two 30 because I'm taking off two roses. But now, so this is how I usually do it. I got my $48 a product. I'm gonna take away a couple roses. So if I take away my two 30 for my two roses. Yep.

I think that that is right. Okay, I'm at 45 77 then stock right now is 1499. A bunch I would at least add for a bridesmaid, three stems for a bride five. 'cause otherwise it just looks weird to me. I'm just saying. So if it's 14 nine, I need to add, if I'm using five stems, I need to add seven 50 in product to my base recipe.

Okay, so now I'm at 53 20. My queen ans lace. I already got my filler flower built in. I already got white maass that would look beautiful in this bouquet already built in. Let's just say that this, also had Oculus dancing. So then I'm going to add. My Oculus, I'm gonna add half a STA or half a bunch.

And my Oculus right now, last time I bought them were $20. If I am going to be kind of in the peak of summer when I'm estimating this, maybe I wanna just say 25. So if I'm adding half a half a bunch, I'm gonna add 1250. So right now our product cost is at 65 70. Then let's just say that there is three bald dahlias in this and it is in September, so I'm not afraid of getting bald dahlias and plus you guys, I am going to grow so many dahlias on my new farm.

I'm so excited. I have ordered so many dahlias. It is going to be crazy. So excited. So 65, 70, we're gonna add some ball values, but again, like I'm thinking, am I gonna still need 15 roses? Let's just say that this bouquet picture is big and banging, so we're gonna just leave the rose count alone. We might not need to use it, but at least we've accounted for it.

And we're gonna add three ball dahlias. I know that I can get three ball dahlias for about three 50 a piece, so I am going to add. 10 50 in Bald Dahlia because I just want a little pop in there. So I have $76 in product right now. So if I take $76 and I times it by my three, we got 2 28 60, we're gonna add our $14 for our vase that is $7 and we've doubled it.

2 42 60. Is our product cost with our markup and our, our base with our markup. Then we are gonna times that by our 25% labor. So we come up with 3 0 3 25. So for this bouquet with our. Premium flowers and with our vase and all the goodies and our markup and our labor. We're at 3 0 3 25. We need to add a little bit for ribbon.

So I would say if we said 3 0 5, we would be. With our proper markup, let's just say like you could do three 15 if you wanted to, or if you wanna build in a little bit extra for, you know, something special that you might run into in the cooler. Or potentially, if you wanna even say 2 99, you're not gonna be crazy far off, but you don't wanna make a habit out of that.

I always like to use numbers that are going to be compelling. So I might even say, okay, we're gonna do four Oculus, and then that would help us get to 2 99. And you can use them strategically, so they're not even gonna know and. When you do those kind of shifts, I do a lot of those shifts on my final order.

When I'm figuring out all of my bulk packages that I'm going to need and all of a sudden I'm like three stems short. I always wanna have extra stems for breakage. You should always make sure, especially when you're doing a full wedding, that you're at least ordering, I would say an extra bunch. But if I need like two.

I probably have enough covered with getting just that extra bunch and covering those two, but let's just say I wanted to make sure I had like four extra blooms or five and I'm at six or seven that are needed out of that bunch, I probably would maybe cut. I. Oculus somewhere in the equation so I could help make sure that I'm not going in and spending another, $25 on an extra bunch of Oculus.

But everything still looks good. So I'd used my base recipe and I easily was able to figure out. By minusing and plusing to my base recipe. 'cause I know what my base recipe is and I never am like going crazy unless a bride is giving me a picture. But then I can just go, okay, that looks like it is really, really stock heavy.

So I probably, for girth in my bouquet, I'm gonna have five roses at least. But then I'm probably gonna have 15 stems of stock. So I'm still easily starting with that foundation. Okay. I got my five roses, so I need to take 12 roses away from my base recipe. I'm still gonna probably use the same greenery, the same filler flour, the same transition blooms.

I'm just adding after I've subtracted my roses and I've added my line flour at 15 stems. So if it's 1499, I'm going to add 2250 in stock. To my base recipe after I've taken away 12 roses. Then I still got the same thing. I've got a completely different look to my bouquet because I've added just a ton of, of line flour.

And you can, I mean, you can do wonderful, wonderful things with designing with stock. It is such a versatile flour that 15 of it is gonna be a very nice bouquet, especially if you get your roses kind of hunkered down in there. You have a nice spiral technique and if you really want to create space in that.

A little chicken wire egg goes a long way in, in making space in your bouquet. So that is just like a base recipe kind of foundation that I could use in my estimates. I could use it in my pricing online. I could use it for my pricing for a la carte. Let's say we use this exact same kind of equation going into an a la carte.

Then let's just say we have a client that wants bright and cheery palette. I easily can find two shades of bright and cheery roses. Then for my filler flour, I could use a really pretty wax flour, like that really nice purple wax flower with a hot pink and a orange crush. Rose then. I could potentially add for my greenery.

There's a bunch of greenery that have like a little yellow on them. I could add that and that is a really fun bouquet for my, I could use daisy fever view. I. If I wanted to create a more of a kind of summer sunshine, bright and cheery, you know, sometimes people share with me an inspiration photo.

Otherwise I'm just doing what I want with a LA card. I also could do three different, I could do a pink expression rose. I could do a hot lady rose. I could do an orange Berra. I can get a Gerardo Gerb for a dollar 65. So I'm just working with, I'm gonna have 17 stems and I am dividing, so I'm gonna have four roses of pink expression, four orange crush, and then I'm gonna have five of, no, that would be, if we were doing 17, I'm gonna use six.

Six and five. Six gbs, six of one color rose, and five of another color rose. And of course I play around with my global recipe and my, my bulk order that if for some reason I'm looking and I have to buy 10 stems of gbs, I wanna make sure if I'm buying 25 stems of roses, I wanna make sure that I'm utilizing and still having a little bit extra and getting to that end result of staying within that budget.

So when you have this base recipe, you could, oh, and I didn't add a transition flour so I could add a yellow babe. Spray rose. I could ask add edia. Edia is smaller than a big bloom, but not as small as daisy fever view. That would be an adorable, I could use yaro. I could use, you know, something just really bright and cheery that still fits within that budget.

I have $7 and half a bunch that I can use for my budget. I. That would all work for me to do a bright brightened cherry. Let's just say we were doing dark and moody color palette. I could use a red Paris rose. I could use a roseberry rose, my favorite raspberry colored rose. So beautiful and look so good with dark and moody.

I could add some thistle. That could be my transition flower because thistle, if I get like a supernova, will still fit in a half a bunch $7. And adds a nice deep blue. Then I could, for my greenery, I could add a goni. I could add some beautiful dark colored agon. It would be a little bit higher than a normal, like, you know, I think we budgeted for $5, but the I am going to use so much less.

Than I would a single stem, like Israeli Ruscus or Italian Ruscus. So that Agon is going to, even though it's going to be more, I think the last time I bought Agon it was 1799, a bunch. But I am going to use two stems, 'cause it breaks apart into a million pieces. So I got that. So if I have a transition bloom, I need a filler flower.

What would be a good dark and moody filler flower? I potentially could get some yaro that would be beautiful. In a red or colored like that I could get it would be a little bit more expensive. So again, I'm weighing out the budget. Some cal potentially would be really pretty. I could put if there's blackberries or you know, something really dark hypericum berries.

I'm not a fan. They would work as a filler ish type bloom and within the budget. So you can use so many different options as long as you're picking from a bucket and picking from that bucket within that budget. And if you're overspending here, then you need to underspend. So I could potentially find some rosemary roses.

I might be able to get them for a dollar 29. So that still means I got $48 in totality that I can spend on this. So then I'm just looking at how can I tweak the budget to get to this really the end goal of $48 in product. And once you've started to play with this base recipe, you will be able to do estimates so fast because you look at a picture and you're like, you know what?

My base recipe, I'm gonna switch out like, or I'm gonna add this, and it's just, it's so fast, so simple. You can do this with Compos, you can do this with Bud VAEs. If you're using a premium bloom, you're just swapping out that premium bloom price. Fast, easy and going to speed up your recipes, going to help you add pricing transparency in your business, which to me is invaluable and you are going to feel confident.

I can easily have discussions with people. That they are way off their rocker from a pricing perspective. 'cause I can easily tell them, Hey, I'm, you know, you're telling me that you want all these things. So I was just kind of going through the math like it's florist math. It's easy if I just say throwing out a really, you know, just round numbers.

You can use your starting at pricing. Let's just say you're at like $225 for a bride bouquet. Let's just say 125 for each bridesmaid, you have 10, so there's 1250 just in bridesmaids. Then let's add your bouquet at 2 25. So we are at 2 7 5. 3 75. 4 75, so basically $1,500 and we've just got bouquets. Then you said you want personal flowers.

This is another great thing. Flat rate pricing on personal flowers. You can say, I'm at $20, $25, whatever it is for whatever item, flat rate on pedals. You can easily just say, okay, you need 10 of this, five of this. That gets us to this price. So we're now at, let's just say $1,850. You're telling me you want a ceremony.

I have flat rate pricing for cages. I can do a very simple cage for 2 25. I pretty much could do a really simple ass cage for 175. So if I wanna just say $225. Per cage. And in my mind I see I'm not telling them to 25 a cage. In my mind I see three cages plus a mini cage. So then I can just go, okay, there's three cages, 2, 4, 6, 75, and then I'm gonna add 150 for the smaller cage.

So if I am at, 6 75 plus my little case. Like then we're just saying, well, it, I mean really rough if I'm saying like even $800 for the ceremony, we're already at 2,500 and that's not, with having it set up the taxes, you know, if you need me to tear anything down, and I think you mentioned you need 20 tables.

And so 20 tables, my least expensive option for centerpieces is $55 for Bud VAs, and they're absolutely beautiful. But if I'm just using that base number and figuring out $55 times 20. That's $1,100 just for your centerpieces, and you're telling me that you have a $3,000 budget. So before I set up and deliver, potentially tear down and tax we're already $800 over your budget before we add any of those costs.

So like I would much rather have that discussion. When I am face-to-face on Zoom because I can get them to reason, I can get them to make concessions. I can get them to tell me that the ceremony piece can be half as cool as the picture that they gave me, or that they're going to go get some lame ass candles for half their tables, and so I only need to worry about 10.

Whatever it is, it's so much easier to have that conversation, and that's why this base, recipe based kind of pricing can come into play and make you the hero because you are the only rational person who could have a very candid conversation about pricing without, like, think of it when you're going to buy a car.

I know I always bring this parallel in 'cause I sold cars for so long, but it's so relevant. There isn't pricing out there for car, for flowers. Like there is vehicles, but you have a way easier time when somebody's coming in and just telling you like, here is this car and it's, this is what your payment would be.

With all of these things, including your trade-in, like having that discussion like there instead of, Hey, let me go to my manager and get all these pricing and things like that, like that never feels good and you lose your leverage, you lose that advantage of just being able to really have a candid conversation in real life.

'cause afterwards when they get your quote and they can't afford it. And then they never reply to you because their tail is tucked between their legs. That is not a win for you if you never hear from them. Yes, sometimes those conversations suck. Sometimes they are uncomfortable. I don't mind uncomfortable, so I would rather us be uncomfortable now than me be uncomfortable later when they don't respond to me.

I. Get one person a year that ghosts me. It's normally because I thought they were assholes and I didn't really like them, and I probably took too long to get their estimate because I did that purposefully. I probably shouldn't even got to the point of meeting with them. But there's something that didn't pick up on my radar, but it picked up when I met with them and I'm like, this person is not my human and ugh, not my favorite.

Like any of those conversations, like I like if I feel that way. I'm probably intentionally going to screw up and not try to book their wedding 'cause it doesn't feel good. So having those frank and open and honest conversations right away are going to save you so much heartache in the end. I hope this was helpful.

I, I feel like this base recipe we were just training on this and the floral CEO Mastermind and next month we are actually going to make base recipe pricing for everyone in the Mastermind so that they can go in and if you like, designing with other stuff like. You do you, whatever it is, you can still have a base recipe.

You can still have a foundation of where to start so that you are not starting at scratch every single time. If. You need extra support. The floral CEO Mastermind is the place to be. I swear, like I, I mean I talk about this all the time because I fucking love this container. I wish I had something like this when I was struggling and not making money and I was struggling and not feeling like I had any community.

We have and I'm just throwing out one of my, my new faves, like she is hilarious. Like these girls in there are so amazing. They. They're so kind and so thoughtful and like, I just didn't even know that that existed, but I knew it could. And so this is also, I'm putting this out there as I am this week, like making so many dreams in my life happen.

Whatever you think it can happen. You can wish whatever you want in your business, in your life into existence, and this space is just gonna be there to support you. Like I. I am going in about a week and a half in 15 days. The Minnesota Floral Collective is having the fourth event, and I was reflecting on that because I'm planning out details.

We're gonna have a flower friends friendship bracelet bar, and I was getting things delivered for it. And I was thinking about like, when I dreamt about this. This moment, these events, having these events, and I was thinking about like how big that felt and I'm like, this is gonna just be a fucking Sunday of me hanging out with cool people and me helping educate people to have this like business that can make them money and be inspiring and they can have a life in addition.

They love and not be running around like a strung out crack addict, like that has no energy, no space for anything because you're tapped out. There is so much more than that. And so this event was just a reminder that like you could dream so big and it can happen because so many of those big things are happening to me and I see the girls in my mastermind.

It's happening for them, and I believe in you. If you don't have somebody that believes in you, I swear I, I will believe in you like no other. And if you don't have the tools, I will teach you. I will teach you how to do this. Like I will teach you how to have hard conversations. I will teach you how to love your business.

Again. I will support you in a way that is. Just, I had one of my mastermind girls, I, she was like, Jenny, you're the first person who has really, really believed in me. And I was like, almost lost it. 'cause I love her so much and like, like every time I see her I just, 'cause she has flown, she's got on airplanes to spend time with me and come to my workshops.

And every time I see her, like I do believe in her so much. And like I have seen that momentum, that push. Because I have it with my husband, like he believes in me. You guys like so much. And whenever I see somebody that's struggling in their business, I'm like, what is your support? Do you have somebody believes in you Because you have to have that.

You have to have that support that just like this person's like, you are unstoppable, your success is inevitable. I believe in you so much and I am going to support you. You need that person, and if you don't have that person, I will teach you how to train those people around you to do that. Or how to have hard conversations that this isn't working for you anymore.

Which is is really sucks, but your success is inevitable and you need to set your life up so that inevitability happens. Thank you so much for listening, flower friends, thank you so much for supporting me and listening to this podcast. I am the geek who looks at downloads and just feels like warm in my heart, knowing that people are listening and I am hopefully impacting you in a positive way that you can see what I know is so true, that you can have so much more than you have right now, and it's just waiting for you to go get it.

Thank you so much for listening, flower Friend, and 📍 you have an amazing flower filled week.