George’s Floral Boutique owners have grown into their roles

It would be anyone’s guess as to how two guys that went to school for aerospace engineering and nursing wound up owning a floral boutique.

Fortunately, George’s Floral Boutique owners Mitch Ballas and Randy Ammerman are here to tell us.

The two worked for George Adelwerth and Tom Nigrelli in the 482 E. College Ave. shop until the spring of 1991.

“Tom and George asked us if we’d want to buy the business,” Ammerman said. “We worked for them a little while longer and then May 20, 1991, we bought the business.”

They considered buying the business for about six months — a big difference compared with the guys who will show up in their shop on Valentine’s Day to buy flowers.

Q: How did you decide to buy the shop?

MB: The Cold War came to end, so they didn’t need me (in aerospace engineering).

RA: And I was tired of being a nurse after so many years. I was burned out from that, and we were interested in being florists.

Q: Was it the plan to own the boutique for 25 years and counting?

MB: At that time in 1991 we were just so scared, wondering what we just did.

RA: The day we signed the papers, I sat down. I was so sick to my stomach I put my head down on a desk, and George came over and asked if I was OK. I said, “I don’t know.” We both had jobs where we had an income coming in, and now that was going to come to an end. This place was suddenly ours, and it was all about us. If people don’t buy from you, you don’t eat.

Q: What have you learned about being a florist?

MB: George stuck around for 12 months after the sale of the business. He was there to advise, and a lot of what he said was spot on. He also said we’d want to change some things. We focused on providing quality and learned how to process flowers to a higher degree. We’ve learned tricks over the years on what to do with certain flowers that make a huge difference in how they perform. Certain suppliers provide a higher quality product than others. There’s local production that may be more expensive to buy, but the quality is so far above what we could buy from Florida or California that it’s worth the extra cost.

Q: How do you handle working with customers from different cultures?

MB: That’s just a part of the job, and we have to be educated on a lot of different scenarios. Like last night, a gentleman came in for flowers, and his wife was flying in from Spain. She’s Spanish, and he’s Argentinian. He wasn’t quite sure what to buy her, so I asked him a number of questions to figure out the right flowers for her. You know, in Japanese culture you do everything in twos, and western culture everything is in odd numbers. Then you have to understand religions. Chinese, if it’s a celebration, it’s red. Austrians consider certain flowers to be funeral flowers. Our population here is so global, so you have to be able to shift gears and satisfy all of those different cultures and traditions.

Q: Valentine’s Day is a week away. Are you busy all week or just the last day?

RA: Oh no. We’ve had people placing orders for weeks. They’re not virgins to Valentine’s Day, but for a lot of students it might be their first year. They’ll come in on Valentine’s Day having no idea how busy it’d be. They’ll learn and place orders the next time. What we’re going through now is a bunch of prep work. Anything and everything that can be done ahead of time, getting vases, having supplies out and ready to go, we do it. This all really starts before Christmas is over. (Manager) Brooke (Thomas) starts ordering flowers, baskets, vases.

Q: Any good stories about someone waiting at the last minute for Valentine’s Day?

MB: One year back in the 1990s, a Valentine’s Day fell on a Sunday. The Penguins were playing that day, and at about 8 o’clock that night the game was over. Those guys realized at about that time it was Valentine’s Day. So, we had a line going far out the door, because I think we were the only ones that stayed open that late that day. They were literally fighting over scraps at that point. We had stuff that we wanted to throw out, and these guys wanted to buy anything that they could get their hands on.

This story was originally published February 5, 2016 at 1:44 PM with the headline "George’s Floral Boutique owners have grown into their roles."