We recently connected with Alanna Messner-scholl and have shared our conversation below.
Alanna, thanks for taking the time to share your stories with us today What’s the backstory behind how you came up with the idea for your business?
Waverly Flower Co. is a floral design studio and garden in Greater Philadelphia, and we custom-grow flowers for weddings and special events throughout Greater Philadelphia. In regards to how I came up with “the idea,” I’d love to zoom in and share a little bit more about the story behind behind our “Share The Love” program, where we repurpose wedding and event flowers into donations to the community.
I got married in 2017, a few years before I entered the industry. I always wondered what happened to all of the beautiful flowers after the reception ended – and, while planning my own wedding, I learned that, unfortunately, the overwhelming majority of florists and venues simply trash the flowers at the end of the evening.
After my own wedding, I opted to save all of the flowers, and asked my family to load them all into the back of my husband’s truck. The day after the wedding, I spent the afternoon breaking down all of the larger arrangements into dozens of mason jars and dropped them off at a local nursing home. Seeing the joy and surprise on the resident’s faces was a really wonderful end to the weekend!
Fast forward a few years, and I began growing flowers on a larger scale and was asked to do our first couple of weddings. I couldn’t stand the idea of trashing flowers at the end of the night, so I began taking steps to figure out how to make larger-scale donations on a regular basis, on behalf of any of our interested clients. After connecting with a handful of regional organizations (including cancer centers, senior living facilities, and women’s shelters), I started thinking through the logistics, including necessary materials and labor.
I put a call out into the community one day, just via Instagram, to see if anyone had extra small vases that they’d be open to donating to us for the purposes of donations. Within the week, we’d received over 40 of them dropped off to the studio! A lot of our local regular delivery clients know we always accept simple vases, and they’ve so generously continued to share their extras with us. This helps us manage this additional process affordably. And next year, it tentatively sounds like we’ll have a small crew of volunteers to assist with transforming the flowers from larger centerpieces into smaller “bedside-friendly” vases.
I am so lucky that we get to continue to do this kind of work while giving back to our community.
As always, we appreciate you sharing your insights and we’ve got a few more questions for you, but before we get to all of that can you take a minute to introduce yourself and give our readers some of your back background and context?
Prior to entering the floral world, I received my doctorate in Clinical Psychology and had just finished up my post-doctoral fellowship at a hospital. I loved my job – I loved my clients, I loved my coworkers, and I was fulfilled by my work. However, I was in the middle of my post-doc when the pandemic hit, and I had just given birth to my infant son. Just a couple of months later, I got pregnant with my daughter. It was a challenging time where I deeply struggled to adjust to the intense workload as a new mom. Ultimately, I didn’t feel that I was being the kind of mother that I wanted to be. After a lot of thought, I made the decision to (at least temporarily) trade in the title “Dr.” for “Mama” and I spent the following year at home with my two babies.
During this time, I found a lot of joy in the garden. I had always loved gardening, and I started to grow more flowers – first a little, then a lot – and spent long days in the backyard with my children. I began casually selling the flowers and, after a few months, I was asked to do our first wedding. And then our second wedding, and then our third. At the end of that year, we had built enough of a portfolio that I realized this could be a legitimate career.
The following season (our current season!) has been a whirlwind. We’ve been fortunate to “flower” about three dozen weddings, and we have six amazing women on the team who provide assistance with both design and event set-up.
How do you keep in touch with clients and foster brand loyalty?
It is always my hope that our brides and grooms feel deeply connected to their flowers throughout the whole process – before, during, and even after their wedding day. It sounds a little corny, but I like to think that when brides and grooms choose to work with Waverly Flower Co., they get to enjoy a very different type of floral experience. For example, this past summer we hosted a garden party where all of our bridal clients and their families were invited to see our “showroom” garden, tour the studio, and meet the designers. This February, we’ll have a well-known textile artist, Rebecca Kelly, assist each of our brides with naturally-dyeing a silk ribbon to use for their bridal bouquet. I cannot wait for this! And, in a few weeks, as the garden’s season ends, we’ll be saving seeds from the very same flowering plants that we cut from for our weddings this past season, and packaging them up into miniature jars to mail them as a keepsake. I love the idea that they can grow a garden next spring using seeds from the very same plants that we cut from for their wedding florals!
Can you talk to us about how your side-hustle turned into something more.
Growing and designing flowers started as a hobby, turned into a passion project, and has since evolved into a full career. While I haven’t yet achieved the salary that I would have had working in my prior career, I anticipate that should happen next season. It is so rewarding that we get to provide (what I hope is) enjoyable, flexible, and creative work for our team members, too!
A key milestone for me was realizing that our yearly sales hit six figures a couple months ago. I don’t pay too much attention to numbers (although I really ought to) so that one took me by surprise and made it clear that this can be more than “just” a side-hustle. I’m deeply grateful that we’ve grown in the ways that we have, both literally and figuratively. While I’m not sure exactly what I owe our success to, I like to think my passion and deep love for flowers shines through to clients. I wake up every morning motivated to thoughtfully and meaningfully share the beauty of flowers for the folks we are so lucky to serve; it’s the most incredible career in the world!
Contact Info:
- Website: https://www.waverlyflowerco.com
- Instagram: waverlyflowerco
- Other: Nope I live under a rock otherwise lol
Image Credits
Ashley Meier Photography, Laura Olivia Photography