The Morning Journal (Lorain, OH)
‘It’ll be painful. But we’ll survive.’
Zelek Flower Shop closes to walk-ins
Decorations, trinkets and apparel decorate the front area of Zelek Flower Shop Inc., 101 Reid Ave. in Lorain.
The delicate smell of various flowers hangs in the air.
The lights in the shop are dimmed due to the lack of foot traffic in the store.
Mary Beth Zelek, owner of Zelek Flower Shop Inc., and her staff made the decision to close their flower shop due to the novel coronavirus.
“We’ve decided to no longer allow walk-in traffic,” Zelek said. “We made the decision to close because our merchandise is handled a lot.”
Customers can order flowers online or call the store to place an order.
Employees will make the arrangement or basket and can deliver them, Zelek said.
Once the flowers are at the destinations, the deliverer calls the customers to let them know they’ve arrived, she said.
“If someone has a pickup order, we run it out to their cars,” Zelek said. “All of these precautions are to minimize the risk of contact with COVID-19.”
Zelek said the store went from around 30 to 40 sales a day to around 10.
“We realize what we have is nonessential,” Zelek said. “I’m confident we’ll survive this.
“It’ll be painful. But we’ll survive.”
Due to COVID-19, local churches have canceled Easter celebrations including the foods, flowers and other decorations.
“Our standing orders for churches and Easter, that’s a big chunk of our sales,” Zelek said. “We’ve also had a wedding postponed until further notice.”
While Zelek still has a wide array of flowers in various colors, she said she anticipates a shortage of flowers in the United States.
“A lot of flowers are grown in South America,” she said. “They’re grown in fields because they have a naturally warm climate and don’t need greenhouses.”
The flower industry is suffering from a major loss of customers across the world, Zelek said.
“There’s been a domino effect where small businesses aren’t able to get the flowers from the deliverers and the growers lose out,” she said.
With a variety of wholesale houses in the area, Zelek’s Flower Shop has access to resources that a lot of floral businesses don’t have.
“We’re fortunate to have five or six wholesale houses 20 miles from the area,” Zelek said. “We’re trying to stay positive.”
A small business with 10 employees, Zelek’s Flower
Shop is trying to keep its employees working and happy, she said.
“We’ve had to cut down hours, but my staff understands and has been great,” Zelek said. “We have some people who volunteered to work on a call basis.”
Zelek said she and her staff have created new baskets and arrangements for people during this time.
New baskets have included crossword puzzles, wine, candy and various other goodies.
“People are trying to have fun with it and send things to people they care about,” Zelek said.
Although times are uncertain, Zelek said she and her staff are still passionate about their jobs and are excited to come to work.
“It doesn’t matter how long we do this,” Zelek said. “We’ll see something beautiful and say, ‘Oh look at these,’ and get back to work.’”