The Flower Industrial Complex behind Valentine's Day Flowers and why they have to Cost This Much

One wonders how the flower growers do it; just in time for Valentine's Day each year, florists around the country have to be ready with about 200 million roses - bloomed just in time to be fresh for the special day. This minor miracle though, happens in a way that's completely invisible to the general romantic public - who have no idea usually, what goes into growing, harvesting, preserving, shipping and selling everything. If there's one thing your average flutter-hearted boy or girl is aware of, it's that somehow, Valentine Day flowers are unreasonably expensive these days. When you pay $5 for a single flower, you come away with the feeling that someone somewhere  is getting really rich, and really suckering you for it.

The problem with Valentine Day flowers is that those flowers have to be delivered to the store exactly on the day. It won't do to deliver them one day early or one day late. The sheer scale of the Valentines day flower business, rather than helping reduce prices, increases, them. Flowers are something that have to grow naturally. They can't be stamped out in a factory assembly line. Worse still, they happen to be extremely perishable. To get this many perishable goods ready at the exact right time can be quite a challenge. It ends up costing money. Even so, most of the profit on each flower sold on Valentine's Day goes to the florist and not the farmer. Each stem that sells for $5 on Valentine's Day, costs the florist two dollars to buy from the wholesaler. That's a clear $3-profit for someone who just hands you the flower. Let's look at everything that goes on before with that flower arrives at your sweetie’s doorstep.

American Valentine's Day flowers come from the Central American countries of Ecuador and Colombia. Growing beautiful roses can be quite difficult for flower farmers. To begin with, rose bushes that are intended for Valentine’s Day production have to have their stems cut back. That makes them really slow their flower blooming process down. When the flowers do arrive, harvesting them can be such a delicate process, that it has to be done by hand. There's no huge rose harvesting machine. There are just people with little clippers walking about. Anything that's this labor-intensive, costs a lot of money.

Any time there is a festival of some kind and goods that need to be delivered forward, the cargo companies naturally increase their cargo rates - they know that there is unavoidable demand at hand. Bringing 200 million roses into America with secure packing requires thousands of cargo airplanes. That costs money too. The companies doing the importing need to pay for quick customs processing so that the flowers don't wilt waiting in the cargo clearance bay at some airport. And then, American truckers have to haul all those flowers all over the country. They charge more on Valentine's Day, because they know they can get away with it. The distributor who does all this work usually charges the florists 10 times his usual price around Valentine's Day. The florists themselves charge the customer twice what they usually do. Everyone makes money hand over fist, and it's the poor romantic simpleton buying a dozen pink roses for his girl who usually ends up paying for all of this greed.

Usually, when you go to a wholesale warehouse store like Costco, you can cut out a couple of middlemen and get a far more decent price. Some florists try to recommend other flowers to help people save some. A less expensive bouquet made of daffodils or tulips or daisies can often work great. And these flowers can be matched to the personality of recipient as well.