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The Kentucky Flower Market
145 Plays2 years ago
Welcome to another episode of Hort Culture, the podcast where we talk about all things green and growing. Today we have a very special guest, Kayla Carey, who is the co-owner of The Kentucky Flower Market. She will be providing the exciting details on what The Kentucky Flower Market is all about. So join us for this fun and informative conversation with Kayla Carey on Hort Culture!
Instagram: The Kentucky Flower Market
Questions/Comments/Feedback/Suggestions for Topics: hortculturepodcast@l.uky.edu
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Transcript
Introduction to Hort Culture Podcast
00:00:03
Speaker
Welcome to Hort Culture, where a group of extension professionals and plant people talk about the business, production and joy of planting seeds and helping them grow. Join us as we explore the culture of horticulture. Hey, everybody, we're back and talking about flowers because I'm so excited. Can you tell how excited I am? We got a guest in the house. We got a guest in the house. How's everybody feeling today?
00:00:28
Speaker
Good. The sun is shining. It's good. I feel like I haven't had as much coffee as Alexis. I've had the normal amount of coffee. I don't know. But that's not telling us anything, Alexis. On a scale of one to ten.
00:00:41
Speaker
The correct amount. The correct amount. Don't talk to me about caffeine, okay? Brett's the one who's always like, I'm just going to go get my 18th cup of coffee for the day. Sometimes tea. Sometimes tea.
Exploration of Yaupon Holly
00:00:54
Speaker
I just ordered some seeds of yaupon holly. You guys know about yaupon holly? No. Ilex vomitoria for those playing along at home.
00:01:10
Speaker
It is I think the only North American native to contain caffeine.
00:01:19
Speaker
Oh, so you should ask about that, Josh. So it was used in a lot of like ritual ceremonies, indigenous people. And I think that they just turned in like a variety of ways and maybe drank so much coffee that they barfed.
00:01:37
Speaker
And so they thought that it was that inducing the vomiting, but it turns out, I don't think it was. It's more of a dose problem that you've got under control. Mixing, you know? I mean, you just got to go to limits, right? Yeah. But I got some of that, some of that seed. I also ordered some in some tea bags because I'm drinking right now. I'm drinking Yerba Mate, which is the relative of home brewed in a can. Yeah.
00:02:07
Speaker
It's cheaper than the bathtub. But is it more fun though, Brett? But it does look fun. It's in a yellow can for all of us. It looks fun. It looks fun. Orange exuberance is the flavor. It matches your shirt. Fun fact, if Brett Alver offers you some non-marked, assume it is a bathroom brew. Orange exuberance. It's like, what are you drinking? Orange exuberance. Wow. That's the highlight of the show. We're done.
00:02:38
Speaker
I hope that somebody names a flower orange exuberance. If not, then it needs to happen. Please somebody. By the way, we have a guest.
Guest Introduction: Rookery Flower Co.
00:02:55
Speaker
When I, when I think about exuberance, one thing that would make that makes me really exuberant is when our guests introduce themselves.
00:03:12
Speaker
I'm in Frankfort, originally from Shelby County, so stayed quite close. Yeah, and I farm, and my farm name is Rookery Flower Co., right here in North Franklin County.
00:03:29
Speaker
kind of going towards Oenten. And I'm also the co-owner of Kentucky Flower Market, which is a local flower collective. Is that rookery, like a blue heron rookery kind of vibe?
00:03:47
Speaker
I was gonna say, you're on a stream somewhere. She was like, no one knows what that means. And they're so incredible. They're really near the Kentucky River. So I got the name for it as I would always be out in the garden and I would just see one lone Heron.
00:04:06
Speaker
fly across and then I'd be out there still hours later and then he'd fly back across. We have the hatchery on the other side of our farm. I think they're going over there and having some snacks and then headed back to their home in the evening. My wife and I went on a rookery tour on a boat.
00:04:30
Speaker
One time it was like a little kind of riverboat kind of vibe. And when we stepped onto the boat, the median age dropped by like 40 years.
00:04:43
Speaker
Yeah totally and like the people were really fun and excited and they were really nice to let it we were just beginners so I guess you could say we were rookery rookies in a way. Oh man there he is. Showing up early showing up early strong game. Yeah your logo is has Heron on it. Yeah it's a flying Heron he's in flight but yeah that's that's where it came from. Oh that's awesome.
00:05:11
Speaker
Look at that, look at that well. You're here to chat with us about not just your farm, but you got some other things going on, some collaborative, cooperative things happening with an organization that you'd co-lead on afterward. Yeah, I always feel weird when I say co-owner because it just sounds kind of funky. Co-founder, I don't know. Me and Sarah from Eden Roots Flower Farm run
00:05:36
Speaker
the Kentucky flower market and at its base, I would just say it's just a way to move the local flower movement along. And it's been going for a while, but it's really hitting hard these days and awesome to be a part of. So yeah, I'm not really sure where to start exactly. Yeah.
00:06:00
Speaker
Tell us, tell us how you get started with flowers first, Kayla, like just in general. I mean, my family is garden, you know, like basic veggies just through your home use. Um, and my dad's a taxidermist. So we've always been like very into outdoorsy stuff. Um, but yeah, we moved, uh, me and my husband moved to Franklin County from Louisville, um, right at the very beginning of the pandemic into a camper. And all of a sudden I,
00:06:28
Speaker
had land to play with, um, coming from the city. So I really just dug in and we did veggies and flowers. And then I just, the rest is history. I was obsessed with it. And so I spent every waking minute, we're worrying about it, doing it, thinking about it, enjoying it. Yeah. So I haven't been doing it that long, probably what that was 20, 2020, um, March when we moved out here. So.
00:06:57
Speaker
Yeah, you really went in hard. There's a lot to learn in a short amount of time. You've covered a lot of it. Well, thank you. Coming from you. I wonder how lucky all of you are.
00:07:09
Speaker
folks that do all things flowers, grower, producers, designers, the whole thing. I mean, the timeline in Kentucky, from what I observe now currently, there's just so much interest. We were talking on an earlier episode about these Fruit and Veggie Conference breakout sessions being just packed and so much energy. But when did this start happening, guys? This kind of energy and snowball effect, or has it been here for a while as far as people into flowers?
00:07:37
Speaker
What's going on? Yeah. I mean, it's been happening, um, for a while, like on the long-term timeline, but yeah, it really has hit a big boom when, um, the introduction of Pinterest is really a kind of the marker of where the flowers, local flowers in general kind of like just went crazy because yeah, you had Instagram, Pinterest. Um, and we already know wedding industry is big anyways. Um, but now people could really know what they wanted.
00:08:06
Speaker
Yeah. So visual. Mm-hmm. I never even thought about that. That that's kind of makes so much sense about that. Yeah. Yeah. Pinterest was, I mean, we all like had, I don't know about you guys, but we all had Pinterest boards, right? And I still have Pinterest boards that hold on my recipes. Yeah. A lot of designers currently. Yeah.
00:08:27
Speaker
Showcasing their work and stuff like that. Yeah. We talk about all the stuff on those, on those places. You never see like some of the shots off to the side of people crying with dirt under their fingernails and also dealing with problems. Yeah. You know, dealing with the fire of the day, it's always these beautiful, but it's very inspiring. It's very inspiring when you see, I mean, you know, those of us that, you know, are used to growing and doing things, we kind of know that there's a lot that goes into that, but it's so inspiring. All those visuals. Yeah.
00:08:55
Speaker
I have a question. I was going to say it's inspiring until you're feeling bad about the lambs quarter that you have that's like eight foot tall and you're like, oh, this other person's fun. So beautiful.
00:09:08
Speaker
Comparative depression. Yeah. Yeah. So you talked about your family done some vegetable gardening stuff and you do some of that as well, but was there ever a transitional moment from growing food to growing flowers and understanding that value and that appreciation of that thing? I personally have had that journey of sort of like, if you couldn't eat it, I didn't want to grow it in the past.
00:09:36
Speaker
I don't think we grow, I mean, we grow things that are edible, but they're not primarily for edible, I guess some herbs, but I'm just curious about your journey with that. Yeah, I think like to my core, I'm a kind of creative person. So I like photography and all that kind of stuff. So it was just kind of like a natural flow. We already like to like homestead and stuff. Like I like to grow my garlic and I like to have my things and
00:10:03
Speaker
Um, you know, try to can things, snap the beans, but yeah, it's just, I just, every time something bloomed and you all probably understand this, it was like, like cocaine.
00:10:19
Speaker
It's this infusion of happiness, yeah. I don't think I've really had much control over it. I need to get with it. I don't know. We might not be growing the same varieties. I might need to get a little. You gotta get the poppies. It's all that morning glory. It's the poppies. Side note about flowers and coconut and drugs. Of course, Alexis, it has an aside. Here we go. I saw a video, I think I said it to Kayla, and I think they were in, was it Norway?
00:10:49
Speaker
Where are these? So these swans were refused to leave this poppy field and they were so high that they couldn't fly. And they wouldn't leave.
00:11:08
Speaker
It was like part of a, I think like a little snippet from like a documentary or something like that. And they were, so they were interviewing these people and these swans were just so high from these poppy fields. And they had to catch them and escort them off the property. Like, yeah, like the.
00:11:32
Speaker
Nature's police. I wonder if they like put up a drum. Wizard of Oz, do you? Yeah. Over up a little bit. Over up a little bit. Get out of here. No, they kept, it's like they kept wanting to come back. They probably relocated. It really has you. But anyways, drugs and flowers. So, okay. So we talked a little bit about Kayla, about Rookery Farm. So Kayla, tell us how, how, well, tell us first what a flower like collective is.
Operation of Flower Collectives
00:11:59
Speaker
Like what is,
00:12:00
Speaker
how does KFM like function? And then we'll talk maybe a little bit about how you got started with that. Yeah. Um, so, I mean, when I explain it to people, it's just a group of flower farmer selling together is, is what I say very plainly. Um, but it's a lot more than that. It's a group of flower farmers, um, supporting one another. And also when you sell together the strain on the individual farmer,
00:12:29
Speaker
get taken off and the collective deals with that. So it's like a support group and also some education and just a way to bring the flower community together. So basically we have around 30 farms that participate in our collective and they upload their inventory every single week. What they have, their predictions are about seven days out.
00:12:59
Speaker
And you post it on our platform. It's, you know, it's just like any online shopping experience for somebody who is shopping it. You get an order, you go cut your order and then you bring the order to KFM, which is in Simpsonville, our storefront. And then the collective distributes it and takes the money and then distributes the money back out to the growers. But we take out care of the logistics, all of the communication with buyers, which
00:13:29
Speaker
The logistics and communication are the biggest chunk of time other than the actual growing that you have to do to actually move your product off your farm. And it's a lot. So yeah, that's like our biggest function. We take that chunk of responsibility off the grower and we take care of it. And then in part, you kind of get to sell more because you have a farther reach. That's another benefit of the collective.
00:13:57
Speaker
Sorry, that was a horrible explanation. No, that's perfect. That's perfect. Who, now you say, so farmers are bringing their stuff in after they've gotten an order. So who is buying this stuff? I mean, I know that sounds like a simple question, but it isn't quite as simple as that. The answer is everybody really. So we have the wholesale. So you're, you're buying it in 10 stem bunches, sometimes five at wholesale pricing. So our main.
00:14:27
Speaker
you know, target, for lack of a better word, is wedding designers and brick and mortar florists. But with the Kentucky flower market now having their own brick and mortar storefront, we now have a retail component. So when our farmers send extra stuff in, they also get a second opportunity for sales. So one on the online platform ahead of time.
00:14:53
Speaker
that you send anything extra you have, you might get a few more sales after the fact of stuff that you might have discerned the compost didn't relate have anywhere to put. So it's everybody buying, everybody wants to buy. Everybody's very excited and interested in local flowers. And the response has been insane just from the community now that we're here.
00:15:20
Speaker
Do you find that producers are just like, when they find out about you guys, they might not have known about you guys before that they're just super pumped that, uh, you can take some of the marketing load off of them. Do you guys find that just like that makes people happy? I don't know. I never really had that like direct comment, probably. Honestly, for some of the growers initially, this is our second year. Um, it, we had to kind of dispel that competition factor.
00:15:50
Speaker
Um, because small farms do feel like other small farms in their area are their competition Um, and we're here to say like no that's not true You can sell more when you sell together. Um, I do think people once they start doing it and they understand what's happening Um that they love it because you literally just get your order and then whatever you go and harvest has already been sold so you're cutting
00:16:15
Speaker
Yeah. Yeah. And that's, that's awesome. And that's what I was, I guess getting at, uh, if I were producing things, that takes a lot of time. And then the marketing.
00:16:24
Speaker
takes a lot of time, I would be thrilled to find someone like yourselves that are doing this and helping out with part of the process. Because if they wanted to focus on growing, they could maybe focus a little bit more on growing is the way I'd see that. So that's awesome. Yeah, it seems like that serves such an important role. It also helps with burnout, which is one of the biggest problems in the farming community. Yeah, so for myself, I think that
00:16:53
Speaker
like such a big component to why I feel so strongly about the collective mindset because it benefited me also. Yeah, it's awesome.
00:17:05
Speaker
One thing, Kaylee, you've hinted at, but I want to make clear because it's such an awesome thing and I think is one barrier that the collective that Kentucky Flower Market has helped to overcome was that a lot of time florists, a lot of the time those are wedding florists specifically, they need a lot of one product. So they need a lot of white dahlias or they need more than a lot of these small farms in Kentucky. Now we have a few large farms in Kentucky,
00:17:33
Speaker
They're pretty spread out around the state that are producing larger quantities of just one variety of thing. We do have several of those, but more of those farms that we talked about of the 100 or so that Josh mentioned was on the map in a previous episode are really small farms. They're not able to produce hundreds of stems of one specific thing.
00:17:58
Speaker
That has been a barrier, I think, for small farmers to get into florist because that florist doesn't want to waste their time buying 20 stems when they need 100 stems. The collective can say, okay, well,
00:18:11
Speaker
We now have five farms that can offer 20 stems each, and then that florist can go in and say, okay, I'll take all, and they can buy all of the ones that they want on an online, easy to use platform, just like buying from Amazon. And they can get everything they need in one spot, they can get it delivered, or they can pick up just like they always would from a normal wholesaler. And so I think that that has been huge for the small farmer to get into and cross that barrier, wouldn't you say?
00:18:40
Speaker
at that point, and also like crop failures, you know, it happens, we have a ton of rain. So many of my things were past their prime, they were brown. And that happens to everybody. And it's great that you can just call upon another farm, and quickly, you know, replace that bunch of that person and not let that designer down. And then that builds trust with us, then they come back, they
00:19:07
Speaker
spend more money with local and that's at the top of it. We want, we want their budgets to be local and not at the big wholesalers that are bringing things in from out of country. You know, we want it to be in our own local community and economy. Um, so yeah, I think it's power in numbers and, and it'll continue to get better. Can you, can you talk a little bit about, um, the pricing considerations that kind of fits in with what you're talking about there?
00:19:37
Speaker
And it's something that we have, we have lots of questions about and considerations. And I talked to people quite a bit about pricing their products in all kinds of different markets and different places. And so I'm curious, you mentioned that there's like these, at least two, the wholesale and retail price structure. I'm just curious how that gets decided or what your references are and stuff like that. At the beginning, when we started the collective, it was just like a concept and, you know, a few of us volunteered to say, Hey, like we're down to try this.
00:20:08
Speaker
And when we got into it, that was the hardest part. Sarah, my partner, spent hours looking at different data, looking at different wholesale lists of pricing for different things. And we also work with rooted farmers who runs the platform. They've kind of mentored us over the years, and they're a really great proponent of the local flower movement. I love them. What they're doing is great.
00:20:36
Speaker
But we found out that there's really not much basis for pricing in flowers. It's kind of like, you know, people at the farmer's market kind of stay within the same range, hopefully to be competitive. But nobody's really setting the standard other than the big giant wholesalers. So we did, we got ranges from whatever thing we could find with pricing and we made our own range.
00:21:03
Speaker
And then this year, Rooted Farmers, the platform, they came out with a pricing tool that the collective has access to, which is aggregated data from all over the United States from other collectives, just like ours, on, you know, what a Queenland Zinnia is selling at. And it's got all the data and it's got median. So, you know, we price based on, you know, stem length, quality,
00:21:29
Speaker
All those things. So, you know, if you haven't got a really great flower, but it's short, you know, you might be on the shorter or the lower end of our pricing range. Um, but if it's great, it's like the most premium thing you can get, you're going to be on the high end. Um, and so that's kind of how we work it. We just kind of stay within a range depending. And we also really utilize that pricing tool. I could like to follow up on that with another question about, so you meant this quality thing.
00:21:57
Speaker
This is something we see in, so is this considered a cooperative? It's not a cooperative structure. We did like consider that, but we wanted to get going and it was already the beginning of the flower season. So we went with like an LLC situation. I think that it could move to a cooperative structure in the future, but that's just how it is now. Cool, cool. So within any sort of collaborative venture when you're aggregating product from different places, that quality component
00:22:27
Speaker
becomes really important for the overall brand of the collective in this case. And so I'm curious, I know in some
00:22:35
Speaker
attempts at collaborative stuff in the past, there have been some issues with different understandings or lack of understanding of what quality means. So are you having to do like member training and education and enforcement and eye rolling and arm crossing and everything? You said the E word, enforcement. What's that? It's stressful, but it's a great learning experience.
00:23:03
Speaker
especially for someone like me who didn't have a lot of wholesale or direct to florist experience, I learned a lot.
00:23:15
Speaker
contact people every once in a while and be like, hey, this wasn't good. Or by the time it got to us, maybe it was brown, something happened. But it's really not that often. And we do set the standard at the beginning of the season. We bring in people like Alexis to help educate our group on what it is that we need from them. And really, people just want to grow great stuff. And so they take pride in what they're sending, I think.
00:23:41
Speaker
And so, yeah, we don't have a huge issue within our group. And the collective model, like we talked about, they can buy from lots of places. They know who they're buying from. So that was the other thing I think that in those beginning talks, and Caleb can talk more about this, but people want to, they're proud of their product. They want to keep their name on it most of the time.
00:24:08
Speaker
And so there was kind of like a, well, if I've already been working with a florist, you know, can they keep buying from me if, but through the collected just to make my life easier or whatever. And so if that florist knows that rookery flower co has the best sunflowers, they can go directly and buy rookery sunflowers and then, but they can also buy, you know, Eden roots as sunflowers if they want to and try those out.
00:24:33
Speaker
There's still a name attached to all of these things. It's just a way for you to get more products from more farms. And I think that was something really important, both from the farmer wanting to be proud of it, but also to give, like to give recognition, but you know, their name is attached to it. Like we know, we know where it came from, you know, and more than just not just Kayla and Sarah know about it when it comes into the collective,
00:24:56
Speaker
But the florist knows about it. And so they want to give the best product that they can. Yeah. And sometimes somebody will come back to a farm through the collective because they've gotten good quality product from them before. And it's great for the reach of farms because
00:25:15
Speaker
We deliver in Louisville. So are people out in Lexington and Harrodsburg and people who don't really can't make it work to deliver all the way to Louisville, your product's still getting to go to Louisville where you may not have been able to make that relationship due to logistics. So the reach is great.
00:25:42
Speaker
Can you talk about the timeline of developing buyer relationships and are there particular questions or confusions that they have or had in the past and what do you, maybe what do you think is like the value proposition that you offer to buyers that the ones who buy from you regularly kind of pick up on? Yeah, we like first and foremost try to set forth with like the best quality.
00:26:12
Speaker
Yeah, we really worry about that. So if something kind of may be on the verge, then we work hard to replace it with something that's good. So I think that they know they can come for quality. We've made that reputation. I do think that some barriers we've had is getting people who buy florists and designers who have been in the game for a while, getting them to go with our process.
00:26:41
Speaker
Most florists and designers have been possibly buying from the big wholesalers and they can make their orders way ahead of time, like maybe a month. How far ahead, Alexis?
00:26:53
Speaker
Um, yeah, I mean a month, but they can, they can, they can ask for things two or three months because they know, you know, yeah, it's, it's for those standard things that they know for, you know, the past 20, 30 years, Columbia has always had X ready or, you know, not wherever has always had tulips in these months. And so we, they have a lot more data to work off. Yeah. So we were asking them to change their, what they've done forever. Um, and that's been hard to get them to like trust us.
00:27:23
Speaker
And know that they're going to have to trust us even more because we can only give them seven days advanced on what we have, which is a huge difference.
00:27:36
Speaker
So do you all know like so in those in those other wholesale markets and wholesale production systems is that that predictability or that order ahead component is that based on there being a centralized buyer in those places and there's lots of farms who are growing them and so they know that.
00:27:55
Speaker
Like where does the certainty of the supply come from in the larger markets and what makes that difficult for Kentucky markets? Well, I think it's just simply because when you're buying from the big wholesalers, they have huge farms outside the United States. So the volume that they can get is just insane. And so they normally don't have a problem getting that. Whereas volume here,
00:28:20
Speaker
depending on how much volume, you know, it could be a cap for us with our farm still, even with all the farms together. Yeah, I think that also people just like to know they have clients who are like wanting these certain things, these certain flowers. And, you know, in our model, it's more of a palette based situation like, Oh, you want salmon? Well, we can get you salmon and these different kind of flowers, but
00:28:46
Speaker
It's all kind of like based on how they run their business on their side. Are they going to promise a specific flower to somebody and then they have to deliver on that promise or are they promising a palette which is a lot easier to work in?
00:29:02
Speaker
from that wholesaler versus... So the collective is sourcing from Kentucky farms, roughly 30 from Kentucky farms. A wholesaler is sourcing from the entire world. So if Columbia can't get it, they call Ecuador. If Ecuador can't get it, they call somewhere else. And also those... We talked about this in another episode. They've been doing... Those farms have been around for a long time. They have greenhouse structures. They have
00:29:29
Speaker
Um, they have a climate that is, you know, there's no winter there or, you know, whatever it is where we're dealing with seasonality, crazy, weird climate in Kentucky, a seasonality of it. Plus, you know, we've got these, all these climate change things coming in wind, rain, all of that is going to affect the quality of a flower. How much is available? Uh, you know, the heat, all that. Uh, so from that standpoint, there's, you know,
00:29:54
Speaker
Kayla's sourcing from Dirty Farms to help these florists. And, you know, if you call one of the wholesalers, they're sourcing from the entire world, essentially. Yeah, I wasn't sure how integrated they were. Yeah, I'm field growing. And a lot, most of the other growers are primarily field growing with an exception. So then that's a big liability also that you have to worry about. But yeah.
00:30:20
Speaker
So did you say that talking in terms of palette is one of the ways to maybe bridge the conversation between people who are gradually working towards sourcing things a little more locally? Yeah, I would say that when you're talking, if I was a designer, when I would speak with my clients, I would say, we can get this palette the colors that you want, but the flowers, we don't really necessarily know exactly what the flowers are gonna be. I can give you an idea based on
00:30:51
Speaker
what flowers bloom in June. And that's something that we provide out to people who were doing buyer outreach for. We give them a bloom calendar of the seasonality of Kentucky. And that really helps on education. It helps with some of the questions we might get in our email, like they already have in front of them. But yeah, it's just like, are they going to be flexible? Does their client really want local flowers in their wedding? It's just kind of, what's your motivation?
00:31:22
Speaker
We're going to talk to some local floors here over the next couple episodes of Kathy and Sarah, and they are big users of local. They incorporate it as much as they can. In some cases, we'll only use that. And so it'll be exciting to talk to them about what you were just talking about, how they communicate with their clients on pallet versus, you know, saying, because there are floors out there who
00:31:48
Speaker
you know, pretty much say I will get you this white rose or whatever it is. And then also one thing I thought it was crazy that you all have done a good job with is not just educating the farmers on how to give a good product, but educating the florists
00:32:03
Speaker
Like you said that bloom calendar, like how many times have they asked you for a renunculus in July or, you know, something they love. And it's like, they love local renunculus and you love that they love them. Uh, but you're like, no, they don't like anything above 70 degrees. Like they're not, we can't give them for you. Um, and I think that has been relatable that you, you want to think that they know these things, but they are so trained over the, you know, the past, they're probably,
00:32:31
Speaker
entire career for a lot of them that they can get pretty much whatever they want whenever they want it. And just like we're trained, you know, we can have bananas whenever we want. I'm just going to say fruits and vegetables. Same issue. I saw a comedian one time talking about how he was from, I think, Germany and how he thinks it's bonkers that we can get watermelon whenever we want. He's like, we know watermelon is a summer thing here. We enjoy it while we have it. We just don't go willy nilly in December to go buy a watermelon.
00:33:01
Speaker
I think it's like that same concept. And so you're not only training the florist, but you have to have the florist train the customer. And it's just like so many different levels of education that you all are, are doing with so many different groups and the online aspect of it. Um, another thing I didn't know about before I got into this is that, you know, sometimes florists are just like texting farmers like, Hey, what do you have? You know,
00:33:28
Speaker
The farmers are sending out emails to them and they like it like that. They like having that personal communication.
Buyers' Preferences: Personal vs. Online
00:33:36
Speaker
Now, me as a millennial, I'm like the least communication I can do on the phone is the better for me.
00:33:44
Speaker
There's an app for that. Yeah. So that's also been an issue. Like some people don't like using the internet and don't like placing an online order. And you know, people who are resistant to that, they may just not be our buyer. And you know, we've had to kind of like,
00:34:01
Speaker
take that and maybe we'll chip away at them over the years. Look at all these great cafe au lait we have that you cannot get from a wholesaler. You should order them online. And it's very simple. Sounds like you guys are really in on the platform, yeah.
Rooted Farmers Platform Introduction
00:34:20
Speaker
Yeah, talk about the rooted platform. Yeah, that sounds really interesting. That's when you mentioned that earlier, I was like, Oh, wow, what is that? Yeah, it's a platform that was burst specifically for this reason. And it's around specifically for a flower collective, you can use it individually as your own farm. But the benefits are great for the collective. You know, it's listed by flower.
00:34:47
Speaker
It's got descriptions, it's got stem links, color, you can filter as a shopper from color, type of flower, the farm it comes from, design element. So if you want like spikes, you can click I want spikes and you can see what's available in spike form. So it's very user friendly. You literally just like put it in your cart and then you
00:35:13
Speaker
buy it and then it's over. Like it's very simple. Yeah, it's great.
00:35:22
Speaker
It's called rooted farmers. And, um, yeah, like the fact that it was made only for flower farm, like they've made it now. They've got all kinds of updates on that where like, you know, if you're growing plants or dried flowers or, you know, um, you can do like, see, they, you can do CSAs through there now too, like as an individual farm. Um, is it a ship or a pickup from focused at primarily, or is there that kind of pickup? Yeah, I mean.
00:35:49
Speaker
The Alaska Peony Cooperative uses rooted farmers and they only have like a two month long season and they ship every single stem from Alaska and they utilize rooted farmers. It's everything. Yeah, that's cool.
00:36:05
Speaker
Yeah, they're great in their customer support. My plug for them is amazing. They've, like I said before, have mentored us on, you know, like how a collective runs over the last year and big support for our collective in its first infancy year. And did I hear you say that they have accumulated some of that back end data as far as processing and stuff? Is that part of the platform? Yeah, we have a huge analytics page. Yeah, so we can kind of, you know, at the end of last season, we shared with our growers
00:36:34
Speaker
What colors were the most spot colors? What stems were the most spot? Yeah, what we did the best in so you can kind of also use it for crop planning going forward.
00:36:47
Speaker
Cool. Yeah, that's a really neat feature. The individual farm can look at their own personal. You can look at it as a collective. You can look at it as a state, the whole nation's collective. You can get a lot of good... Josh is over there like, yes, data. Josh is getting excited. Josh is data mining. He just came alive. He's like players of data. Tell me about percentages.
00:37:13
Speaker
So it's awesome. You know, we didn't, we've got, you know, a few minutes left and I think it's important to talk about just kind of how, how someone gets started.
Founding of Kentucky Flower Market
00:37:20
Speaker
Like how, how you got started with a KFM because I'd like to know three things. Okay. Yes, go ahead. Whatever, whatever you're barking up the tree of, but I'd also like to know if I'm a retail customer and if I'm a.
00:37:31
Speaker
Maybe an interested florist or wholesale customer. How do I go about buying from you all as well? If you did real nuts and bolts like very what time do you open? I need to call my head. What do I need to be an approved vendor? Do what kind of thing and then I think Alexis you were asking more on the on the grower side, right? Yeah, I just think if people are listening and want to get well, no, not necessarily growing. I I think how Kayla got I
00:37:55
Speaker
into suddenly into KFM and how KFM became a thing just like a interesting I just find it interesting and all the you all did a lot of flaming hoop jumping I think and and that should be talked about in and rewarded I mean you all did a really incredible thing for the growers here
00:38:15
Speaker
in a very short amount of time. And I just, I want you to brag about it a little bit. Basically, I had sent a very frantic email out a few years ago, a year or two ago, saying I wanted to open a 100% local floral shop here in Frankfurt because I just thought it was like, you know, I have friends that open local food hub and it's all local grocery store. And I'm like, that's so cool, we should have our flowers. I had sent that to a fellow grower slash good friend.
00:38:45
Speaker
And she had been invited in on a phone call with Sarah from Eden's Roots, who had been a part of a collective in Colorado and wanted to start one here in Kentucky. I did not know anybody that I went into business with prior. But we talked to some people. We talked to Brent. What's his last name? Brent
00:39:09
Speaker
and got their ideas on, you know, should we start a cooperative? Like, what are the barriers? What do you need anyways? And then we started the group and we put it out there. We got our, you know, made a business, got a tax ID very quickly. It was
00:39:29
Speaker
Sarah, myself, and then Phoenix Hill Flower Farm, who founded it initially. And we just started running it out of Sarah's barn that was not air conditioned. It was down her backyard, and it was very stressful. And yeah, it just kind of spiraled. And we applied for some grant funding last year. We didn't get it. And then they came back in December, and so they had some leftover money.
00:39:58
Speaker
And then we got a really nice cool grid. So that kind of really helps propel the Kentucky flower market to what it is now, which is the storefront, um, which is just so much more ideal, um, than running it out of a barn. Whose sale and resale. So we're open every Wednesday from eight 30 to six. And that's weird. I know. Um, but, um, are basically the way it runs is.
00:40:26
Speaker
Our farmers upload their inventory every Wednesday morning or should be Tuesday night. The online shop opens Wednesday morning and it's open all the way through Monday at midnight. Our growers get their harvest list and they cut whenever they get an order they know ahead of time.
00:40:46
Speaker
you harvest and then you bring your product to KFM or to me on Tuesday. So that's what I'll be doing today is running the KFM shuttle from Frankfurt to Shelby County. We sort it all, we get it ready for distribution, and then we have people that we pay to deliver or people come pick up. And during those hours where we're delivering and people are picking up for wholesale orders, we open it up to the public and retail customers can come in and shop.
00:41:15
Speaker
Now we also do open on Saturdays occasionally for a pop up if we have extra inventory and we just did a workshop the other day. So we're kind of like sneaking into a bunch of different avenues as far as, you know, how to get the public involved in local flowers more as well as the wholesale.
00:41:34
Speaker
I forgot what else you asked. And so if you're if I'm interested in being a wholesale buyer, do I need to do anything or do I just go to the site? Yeah, it's free to sign up for an account. If you're a wholesale buyer, you need a tax ID number. So that's kind of important. And you kind of need to be like a floral designer or somebody who actually works with flowers to actually get the wholesale account.
00:41:58
Speaker
Yeah, some people try to get it because they do something once a year. And it's kind of hard. It's like a gray area for us. And you're you can also get a just a regular shopper retail account, which is also free. And then you just sign up quickly. And then you can go ahead and start shopping our inventory. So it's fairly simple. We have our website, we have our Instagram, we've got Facebook,
00:42:22
Speaker
We have little flyers with scan codes that we give out all the time. Everybody I talk to, I'm telling them about it. We also continue to do buyer outreach all the time as much as we can.
00:42:36
Speaker
So is the retail purchasing is all online as well? On Wednesdays, we have the extra products that growers can, yeah, you can just pop in and grab. But you can as a retail buyer, you can buy it online as well. Yeah, and that's like your best bet is to pre order to get what you want. There's a wider selection. What comes in the stores extras may not be like
00:42:57
Speaker
You know, it could be the most premium, cool cafe la dalia, or it could be, you know, something like a zinnia that people don't get super excited about. If you walk in, you're just going to find random happiness. I love it. You just walk in and find random smiles and happiness. Yeah, we also like carry like merch from our growers. Like I sell my T-shirts in there, candles, stickers, like it's it's plants. It's kind of like a whole mortgage board.
00:43:28
Speaker
And then as far as on the grower side, I'd imagine we have at least one or two people listening in who currently have a handful of flowers in their yard or at their farm or whatever, and they're thinking, they're dreaming of quitting their job and becoming a flower farmer and working with the Kentucky flower market.
00:43:49
Speaker
As far as becoming part of it. Are you all at capacity? Are you looking for new members? What do you have to do to become a member like to become? Yeah part of the collaborative So we open up our applications in the wintertime because that's when we have the capacity to manage that Because I work full-time and then off-farm and then Sarah also has stuff going on So we're doing a lot of this like in our spare time or on work hours So
00:44:20
Speaker
Yeah, if you want to be a grower, sorry, I forgot what I was saying. If you want to be a grower, we pretty much don't want to gate keep this. We think it's great. We want it to be open and accessible to whoever we want people to be flower farmers.
Joining the Flower Collective
00:44:35
Speaker
But we do have just a few light criteria as far as getting in. You want to have preferably some wholesale experience.
00:44:44
Speaker
So you've, you know, went to a florist, tried to peddle your stuff. You might have a connection with somebody. You have to be able to bring your product to Simpsonville or to the meetup here in Frankfurt with me, which is kind of a, you know, it's on Tuesdays. It's kind of a strict timeline. So that kind of messes with people. You also have to have like an actual business with a tax ID number. You know, some people sell flowers and you know, it's not enough to make a business, but that's a requirement.
00:45:14
Speaker
And then, yeah, we kind of just like see what you have and we'll kind of vet you and look through your stuff. And sometimes we have people bring in sample product for us to look at, you know, show me what you got. But yeah, we also want to like foster learning and love too. So we have, you know, some fresh growers, but they've really taken it and ran with it. And so, you know, it's hard for us to judge
00:45:41
Speaker
We just want people who are committed to it. We're serious. That's a big thing for me. If you want to be committed and consistent with participating in the group, then we'd love to have you. We don't normally open up applications during the season. We've made a few exceptions here and there, depending on what somebody grows. If that's something we have a hole in, we might grab you. Otherwise, it'll be in the winter. We'll open up applications and post it everywhere.
00:46:14
Speaker
And we will post a link to KFM website and their socials in the show notes so that you can easily find that if you're interested in any way, shape, or form you can get to the rooted platform from the KFM website. Is that correct?
00:46:33
Speaker
Any particular flowers or particular color palettes that are in need or that are always in need or hard to find? If you look at the data, you'll see that green and white are forever the top sold colors. So that's your foliage. People don't think about foliage sometimes, but that's kind of what I put my focus on this year was having foliage because it's something people need.
00:47:02
Speaker
Other people do focal flowers better than me, you know, in some cases. So, you know, weddings are green and white. People love an all white wedding. I wish that would change to all rainbow colors, but, you know, we're still working on that. I would say also like peonies are people love peonies. It's a short season that those are a big deal. But I mean, really all flowers, this is their own showcase. You bring that up because
00:47:32
Speaker
Alexis has big peony envy of my peonies in my yard. Oh my gosh, Kayla. So they're in Lexington and I literally will time my peonies based on when Annie Brett's wife will post a peony picture because she always posts it. And I know that within 10 to 14 days, I should have peonies based on that photo.
00:47:56
Speaker
So like I and there it's always like yeah it's pretty consistently 14 days ahead and I'm always mad because you know that first you know what that's like the first peony right like oh I just need it and so I'm always super envious it might be the extra dose of love that I'm giving them not the love
00:48:14
Speaker
I just got to give something inscrutable. Give them a little. We always know who's ahead. It hits the social media hard with all the pictures of the early peonies. My courties love my peonies. They give them pee every day. So I love a flex. You can't top that. Because I call them peonies. I love the way you said it. Either way, I love both pronunciates. Ray says peony, don't you? So gone. Gone on peony.
00:48:40
Speaker
Now, I grew up in the far eastern part of the state and the older folks would call them, the older generations, ponies. And I, forever, I did not know what a pony was. And it was a peony. I was like, oh, a pony. Okay. So there's three pronunciations I have heard and they're all fine.
00:48:56
Speaker
I'm from Yankee stock, so it's a peony, so it's not my fault. I think I learned what it was as an adult, so whatever I have is just like learned. So forgive me. Awesome. Well, Kayla, thank you so much for joining us and helping us celebrate Kentucky Tough Flower Month and all the awesome work that you guys, you and Sarah are doing and just
00:49:19
Speaker
I know you there are times you're being run ragged just trying to keep up with the florists and the grower needs and you know you guys are really doing such a great great service to the entire flower industry in the state and I just I'm very grateful to have you have you and know you and you're just wonderful and thank you for being with us. Yeah thank you all for having us and highlighting this.
00:49:43
Speaker
You know, it's not just July cut flower month for us. It's every month, you know, it's important stuff. So, um, I love the work that I'm doing and it's cool. And I get to meet so many cool people. I get to know you guys like, uh, what an exciting journey.
00:50:02
Speaker
Awesome, awesome. Well, I think we're gonna let you go to do more of that important works. Yeah, so Kayla's information will be down in the show notes. You can get a hold of them, check out the website, buy some flowers.
00:50:15
Speaker
look out for the application window this winter if that's something that you're interested in maybe working with them in the future. You can get a hold of us on Instagram. It's at Hort Culture Podcast. You can also email us at... Oh, they got a sighting of a little cattail here in the background. I love it. You can also email us at Hort Culture Podcast at l.uky.edu.
00:50:41
Speaker
reach out to us either of those places, let us know. If you wouldn't mind, if you're able to leave a review for the podcast, it really helps us to get in front of more eyeballs or ear balls or something along those lines. But we just want more people to share our love of horticulture. And with that, Alexis, wanna take us out?
00:50:58
Speaker
Yeah. So we hope that as we grow this podcast, you will grow with us and join us next week. We're going to be talking about some mulch and then we've got some other great florists coming on talking about more flowers. So we've got some cool stuff coming up for you and thanks for being with us today. Have a great one.