We were lucky to catch up with Andi Thatcher recently and have shared our conversation below.

Andi, thanks for taking the time to share your stories with us today To kick things off, we’d love to hear about things you or your brand do that diverge from the industry standard.

Many may not know this, but 80% of the flowers we see in the grocery store or flower shops are not grown in the United States. Most come from South America and beyond. But our customers have a different option! We specialize in varieties that thrive in Montana. Flowers that can take the abuse of our cold, windy, hail-stricken environment. Their toughness is only surpassed by unique beauty and fragrant perfume that you can only find in a locally grown flower. Many of the varieties we choose to grow do not perform well in a shipping situation, so the only customers who can enjoy them are those lucky enough to live within a 100 mile radius of our farm. Another wonderful side effect of this is something similar to the farm-to-fork idea. When a customer need flowers for a special occasion delivery, a wedding or a memorial service, we go out and cut flowers right from the field and get them to their destination within 24-48 hours. This cuts down on carbon footprint, supports local economy and gives the customer the best value for their money because the flowers last so much longer!

Great, appreciate you sharing that with us. Before we ask you to share more of your insights, can you take a moment to introduce yourself and how you got to where you are today to our readers.

We are a cut flower farm located in Southeast Montana. We specialize in weddings and events, floral design and everyday flower deliveries. We are a seasonal operation, harvesting cut flowers from about April to October. We grow hundreds of different varieties of flowers and foliages to make each of our designs unique.

We were always big gardeners, focusing our time and effort on vegetables and only a few flowers for the pollinators. Now we grow a LOT of flowers, and a few vegetables for our family to enjoy. Getting our hands dirty, cultivating the soil and bringing a tiny seed all the way to harvest time has always been in our blood. When we stumbled upon flower farming as a commercial endeavor, it was a no brainer. Montana can be a brutal area to grow anything in, and flowers were no exception. So we focused our efforts on varieties that can handle some cold (Peonies, Dianthus, Snapdragons, Statice to name a few).

We are now headed into our fifth season, getting more flowers out into the world than ever before! We have several different ways customers can find our flowers. Weddings are our biggest customer, usually taking up most of our weekends throughout the Spring and Summer. We also offer a bouquet subscription where folks can have a hand tied bouquet delivered to their door once a week. Flower arranging classes have been a fun offering where “students” can try their hand at designing a vased arrangement with a little instruction from us. And as soon as we are in season, our website opens for everyday ordering where you can send anyone flowers for any occasion.

We love that we can give our customers a local option, full of flower varieties they’ve never seen before.

Do you have multiple revenue streams – if so, can you talk to us about those streams and how your developed them?

In the first few years, we offered as many sales channels as possible. We did farmers market, bouquet subscription, weddings, pop up bouquet stands, arranging classes, wreaths, florist sales, floral preservation and dahlia tuber sales. Some worked better than others, which has forced us to specialize in the ones that we are more successful at and fit our creative avenue best as farmer florists. If it makes us more revenue and fuels the artistic goal, that’s the right channel for us!

Have you ever had to pivot?

In the first few years of farming, we thought we wanted to be primarily a farm that sold stems to other florists(wholesale sales). So in addition to our summer annuals, we invested in 900 Peony plants. If you want to sell wholesale, you have to have quantity in whatever you grow. Peonies also ship really well, so we thought we would offer nationwide shipping of those also. A few months later, COVID happened. We couldn’t get irrigation parts and we were stuck in the middle of the hottest, driest June Montana had had in a while. We lost hundreds of those baby Peony plants. Since then, we have figured out that selling stems wholesale is the lowest price possible and we can’t always guarantee that the florists will want what we have that week. We leaned into the retail side of flower farming, doing the arranging ourselves and taking contracts for weddings and events. So while it was a financial hit losing those Peony plants, it worked out the way it was supposed to. The spaces where the lost plants are, is where other flower varieties are getting planted in our 2024 farm expansion!

Contact Info:

• Website: www.rimrockflowerfarm.com
• Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/rimrockflowerfarm/
• Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/people/Rimrock-Flower-Farm

Image Credits
Images by Adrianna