Valentines continued from page 10 the impacts deployments have on military families.” During the pandemic, the fi ght is on the home front. “As a business owner, I defi - nitely draw on my ability to deal with stress, problem-solve and remain calm from my days in service,” Busch concludes. “It’s an opportunity to emerge stronger than before. There’s always a silver lining.” — JULIE BIELENBERG Love in Bloom DURING A PANDEMIC, IT’S EASIER TO SAY IT WITH FLOWERS. For fl orists, Valentine’s Day is always a bit of a gamble. How many fl owers are enough? How much extra staff is needed? What price will customers pay? It’s a Goldilocks kind of holiday that fl orists want to get just right, since February 14 is typically their single biggest sales day of the year. Florists anticipate sales to be high in 2021, too. But consumers will discover that some prices have gone up and availability is down. Many fl orists have enjoyed solid business through the pandemic. Flowers have been one way to continue to extend kindness and connection while practicing social distanc- ing, explains Belle Mendenhall, a manager at Bonnie Brae Flowers. “Emotions are running really high,” she points out, “and that’s kind of what fl owers are: a way to send and visualize your emotions.” She’s optimistic about Valentine’s Day sales, because people have fewer choices when it comes to marking the holiday this year. “People still aren’t able to go out to restaurants and movies. There still aren’t as many good date [options]. Travel is still not as easy; it doesn’t feel as safe as it did in the past,” notes Mendenhall, who has worked in the fl ower industry for 21 years — fourteen of them at Bonnie Brae. For fl orists, planning for Valentine’s Day is partly an attempt at guessing consumer sentiment and mostly an analysis of past numbers. Traditionally, they base their or- ders on the number and kinds of fl owers sold during previous Valentine’s Days and on the day of the week that February 14 falls on. Typically, a Sunday is the slowest Valentine’s Day because many couples have all weekend to look for different date activities; weekdays are much busier because many people send fl owers to a loved one’s workplace. While this year’s Valentine’s Day falls on a Sunday, many in the business are aiming for Saturday numbers — not as slow as a typical Sunday and not as busy as a weekday. In 2020, Val- entine’s Day fell on a Saturday. This anticipation is mirrored throughout 12 the fl ower-supply chain. Tim Lister, a buyer- seller for M&M Cut Flora, an eleven-year-old Denver wholesaler that serves around 150 fl orists in Colorado and Wyoming, says that “Valentine’s Day is shaping up to be a much stronger holiday than it was last year.” Lister has worked in the industry for a Belle Mendenhall has seen business grow. classic scenario of supply and demand ex- acerbated by the pandemic: Fewer fl owers were grown. “This year’s a challenge, because [farms] are already running on smaller pro- ductions,” he says, adding that he estimates there’s been about a 30 percent reduction in workforce. Many farms are afraid to plant too many fl owers, and haven’t hired back a full staff since shutdowns in March 2020. Another reason for higher prices is that the cost of freight has gone up, while the number of fl ights carrying freight has gone down. More industries are now competing for space on available fl ights, Lister says, and some companies are offering more money than the fl ower business typically pays. “Air- lines are trying to fi gure out how to make up [for] the lost revenue,” he adds. He estimates that there’s been a 20 to 30 percent increase in freight cost, which tacks an additional 27 to 42 cents onto the price of a rose (20 cents is the usual price of shipping). The other big issue has been weather. “Weather in Ecuador, specifi cally, has been extremely cold and not conducive to rose growing,” he explains. “Some farms are telling me that they are expecting to produce around 30 percent of what they were initially project- ing for the holiday because of this.” Some the entirety of the pandemic; that’s been particularly noticeable to customers who order arrangements online and don’t get exactly the same bouquet they viewed on the website. “It won’t be [the same] because of the issues with supply and demand,” she says. The online images are just a sugges- tion of what bouquets will look like; stores can’t make identical arrangements, because they’re working with living products and have to make do with what’s available. But there are still plenty of ways to be creative, and Bonnie Brae is planning for many of its arrangements and bouquets to be pre-ordered through its website. It’s even trying to keep this year’s Valentine’s Day prices consistent with typical Valentine’s Day prices — $69.99 per dozen medium- stem roses and $80 per dozen long-stem roses. That’s a gift to customers who have been incredibly loyal over the past year, Mendenhall says. Normally, non-Valentine’s roses are $49.99 for the medium-stem variety and $69.99 for long-stems. While that gesture is not something every fl orist can make, Lister notes that buying early is the best way for small fl ower shops to plan for the holiday, and for customers to get guaranteed availability. Wait too long, decade; he started as a driver at a warehouse in Mobile, Alabama, and worked his way up to his current position. Right now he sources from about twenty farms, and begins placing his Valentine’s Day orders in early December. That’s when farms start to “pinch back” — cutting normal production to plant more crops for the holiday, with roses usually in the majority. That gives the fl owers about six to eight weeks to grow before they’re cut and shipped to international destinations. The bulk of Valentine’s Day roses come from Ecuador and Colombia. In 2020, ac- cording to the U.S. Department of Agricul- ture Specialty Crops reports, 98 percent of the roses shipped through Miami in the three weeks leading up to Valentine’s Day came from those two countries. Such production explains why Valentine’s Day roses, as well as most fl owers, are typically more expensive around February 14. This year, Lister anticipates prices being even higher than normal. One reason is the of his orders have even been canceled, says Lister, and he estimates that M&M is about 12,000 roses short of what he hoped to order. But the wholesaler still has 25,000 red roses pre-booked for fl orists, and he anticipates selling an additional 5,000 to 10,000 stems. He predicts that M&M will sell 20,000 to 30,000 roses of different colors, as well. Lister has also found it hard to acquire other standard fl owers, such as alstroemeria, pom pons, hypericum, spray roses, statice and aster. Alstroemeria, in particular, is nowhere to be found, and some farms have communicated that their production of all fl owers is down 50 percent — not just be- cause of COVID. Because of the weather, he explains, “many farms are predicting their crops to produce after the holiday or even during the middle of that week. So we’re going to see a fl ood of fl owers in the week or two after the holiday.” According to Mendenhall, obtaining specifi c blooms has been a problem during and fl orists — like farmers — may err on the side of ordering less. “If they get stuck with a bunch of extra product, that kills everything they make for Valentine’s Day,” he says. — CLAIRE DUNCOMBE Spread the Word THESE ARTISTS KNOW HOW TO PUT THE FROSTING ON THE CAKE. Diana Ayala, the owner of Mermaids Bakery, once made a cake for a family of fi re-breath- ers. “They wanted a real fire-breathing dragon,” she explains, and they even sug- gested running a gas line through the cake to make it happen. While Ayala wasn’t sold on the gas line, she’s always loved a good challenge. So she sculpted an enormous red dragon out of sev- eral tiers of cake and fi t a tiny Roman candle in its mouth — with plenty of instruction that no one stand too close when the candle was lit. The dragon sparked for about a minute, and then they cut the cake. The family loved it. Cake decorating is as much a science as it is a visual art, melding structure with an ability to translate customers’ imaginings into tangible desserts. While every pastry chef brings their own techniques and style, there’s also a collaborative effort in the back of the bakery, a nod to tradition and a con- stant desire to innovate. “When I make my own cakes for my fam- ily and friends, this picture comes into my head, and I see the shapes and think, ‘What do I need to make it look like that? Circles, squares, teardrops?’” Ayala says. She went to school for fashion design, one of many artistic pursuits she enjoyed growing up. Interestingly, baking wasn’t among them. Baking came up after fi ve years of raising her two boys, when Ayala was looking for a creative outlet that also paid the bills. Soon after, in 2008, she and her cousin founded Mermaids Bakery, at 1543 Champa Street. They learned how to make their own cake batter — adapted from their grandmother’s recipe — by trial and error, but the cake designs always came easily. Ayala’s favorite approach to visual design is to paint cakes with food dyes and paint- brushes, like watercolor. “I’ll just sit there and paint it on. Wipe it on with water, wipe it off. Doing stuff like that lights my light bulb, energizes me like a battery,” she says. She’s painted everything from zombies to van Gogh’s “Starry Night,” but the painting is only one aspect of a cake’s design. To make a specialty cake, pastry chefs typ- ically stack sheet cakes that are held together with fi lling such as cream cheese frosting or chocolate meringue buttercream. From that structure, the cakes can be sculpted into many forms. “There is no manual for making shaped cake,” says Michelle Rasul, owner of Gateaux, at 1160 Speer Boulevard. “Every cake that you make that you haven’t made before is a gamble. It’s all about how you prepare.” Things such as weight, temperature, taste and texture set the stage for the design cre- FEBRUARY 11-17, 2021 WESTWORD | MUSIC | CAFE | CULTURE | NIGHT+DAY | NEWS | LETTERS | CONTENTS | westword.com CLAIRE DUNCOMBE
