PEMBROKE PINES, Fla. – The coronavirus pandemic has affected countless lives both locally in South Florida and globally.
It's impacting all kinds of industries, and with Mother's Day's arrival, suddenly flowers are high in demand.
Mother’s Day is, for many florists, the busiest week of the year. But COVID-19 has complicated things, by seriously limiting the number of flowers they normally get in.
Joel Ricci owns Century Florist in Pembroke Pines and says Mother’s Day this year has certainly been different than normal.
"Birds of paradise, ginger, alaconias that we would get shipped in from foreign countries, it’s not available," Ricci said. "The product line that we’re used to having access to isn’t available to us, so we’re doing the best we can to accommodate our customers needs and desires with whatever substitutions we have to make, based on what is available to us in the market."
They’ve scrambled to cover the demand, because even though there are fewer flowers to go around this year, that doesn’t mean there are fewer orders to fill."
In fact, he said they are delivering hundreds of orders a day.
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And while this year might be more difficult, Ricci expects things will go back to normal by this time next year.
"We’re going to get past it, we’re going to be better on the other side of it, we’re going to learn to make whatever adjustments are necessary," he said.
Ricci added that one good thing to come out of this is that people, because they were stuck at home, started ordering early, so he was at least able to get out ahead of the holiday.