The week before Mother's Day, our flower run starts at half past three in the morning at the auction, where a wholesale florist's buyers have already bought the day's stock. By five it is sorted into forty shop orders in our chilled cross-dock.
Five degrees, all the way
Cut flowers last longest at around five degrees, and suffer most from being warmed and cooled again. So the orders stay in the cross-dock until the vans are loaded, and the vans are chilled before the first box goes in.
The last door by nine
Six vans cover the forty shops, each on a route planned the evening before. Every shop gets a text when its van is two stops away, and the last delivery lands before the shops open at nine.
