What is “just one more stem” really costing your florist business?

Guest Blog by Melissa Westcott, Florist IQ

“It just needs one more stem.”

Then a little more foliage to balance it out. Another piece of wrap. A nicer ribbon. We’ve all done it.

You want the flowers to look beautiful. You want your customer to feel they’ve received value. You want to be proud of what leaves your shop.

But the customer’s price hasn’t changed. Only what’s gone into the arrangement.

Multiply that across your team and a week of orders, and those little extras start eating into your profit. The question is: do you know how much?

The price in your head might not be the price you’re achieving

You might say you charge three times cost. But are you counting everything that went into the arrangement?

Here’s a simple example, with all figures excluding GST. You allow $30 for flowers and materials and sell the arrangement for $90. That’s three times the allowed product cost.

Then another $6 of flowers, foliage and materials goes in without changing the selling price. Your actual product cost is now $36, so you’ve achieved 2.5 times cost. The amount left before labour and other business costs has fallen from $60 to $54.

Do that across 50 arrangements and you’ve used an extra $300 of product without collecting another dollar. That’s an illustration, but it shows why those small decisions deserve attention.

And three times cost in this example is simply a calculation. Whether a price works for your business depends on the full cost of delivering the order and the return you need.

Count what actually goes into the flowers

The roses are easy to remember. The foliage, box, floral foam, wrap, ribbon and card are easier to overlook.

Each item has a cost. When it goes into an order, it needs to be accounted for somewhere in your pricing.

Keep the costs current, too. If this week’s supplier invoice has changed, last month’s stem prices may no longer give you the return you expect.

If an arrangement repeatedly needs more product to meet your standard, review the recipe and price together. Your customer should receive what you promised, and your business needs a price that supports delivering it.

Where Florist IQ fits

Our industry partner Florist IQ helps florist owners and their teams account for the flowers and materials used in an arrangement.

In our demonstration with founder Melissa Westcott, she showed us how users enter updated stock costs and quantities from supplier invoices. Florist IQ then recalculates the associated stem prices within the platform.

She also showed how product collections can include the usual components of a design, such as the box, floral foam and wrap. That gives your team a consistent starting point and helps those easily forgotten extras make it into the calculation.

The important habit is recording what you actually use. If another stem goes into the arrangement, it needs to go into the calculation as well.

Florist IQ also supports recording waste. Reviewing what has been thrown out can help you spot buying patterns that are costing money, particularly when different staff work on different days.

The numbers need to change what happens at the bench

Seeing the cost is the starting point. What you and your team do with that information matters just as much.

That’s why the relationship between Florist IQ and The Florist Coach makes sense. Florist IQ provides practical tools for pricing, stock and waste visibility. We help florist owners use that information to make decisions, build consistent processes and follow through.

Perhaps the team needs clearer recipes. Perhaps your prices need reviewing. Perhaps you’re buying the same quantities out of habit, even though too much is ending up in the bin.

Or perhaps you know your pricing needs to change, but you keep putting it off because you’re worried customers won’t pay.

Those are the conversations we work through with florist owners. Better information becomes useful when it leads to action.

Start with one arrangement this week

Choose a design you make regularly. Check the current cost of every flower and material, then compare the planned recipe with what actually leaves the shop.

Allow for the time it takes to make it and consider what the sale needs to contribute towards the rest of the business. Talk through the result with your team and agree on one change to put into practice.

Repeat the check next week. Has the change stuck, or have the extra stems crept back in?

Your creativity deserves to be paid for. So do the flowers you’re using.

Want clearer visibility over what your flowers are really costing?

Florist IQ gives florist owners a practical way to keep track of current flower and material costs, recipes, stock and waste — so you can see what is actually going into each arrangement, not just what you planned to use.

If “just one more stem” has become a habit in your shop, having the right information in front of you makes it much easier to see the impact and make better pricing and buying decisions.

Explore Florist IQ

About Melissa Westcott

Melissa Westcott is the founder of Florist IQ, a platform created specifically for florists to help bring greater visibility to pricing, product costs, stock and waste.

The Florist Coach is proud to work alongside Florist IQ because better information gives florist business owners something concrete to act on — whether that means reviewing pricing, tightening recipes, reducing waste or improving the way the team works at the bench.