STROUDSBURG, Pa. — Flowers of all kinds sold quickly on Valentine's Day at The Floral Boutique in Stroudsburg. Many people stopped in to pick up something for their sweetie.
Maranda Roskilly helps out during the Valentine's Day holiday. She considers it to be the flower shop's single busiest day of the year.
"This morning at 7, we had people lined up in the parking lot kind of waiting for us to get here, and we don't open till 9. So that was kind of interesting," said Roskilly. "We let people in a little bit early today, so there were like 15 people that walked in as soon as we opened the door."
Roskilly says they bring in thousands of stems of flowers and prepare just about every bouquet that goes out the door.
"We closed on Sunday and Monday to make sure that we were able to catch up and make sure that we had all of our deliveries ready for people that ordered ahead of time, and then Monday, we kind of tried to focus on getting the store set up and ready, so we had stuff for people that wanted just to come in and just kind of grab and go," said Roskilly.
What's making a challenging day even more challenging for delivery drivers at flower shops is adding a foot of snow on top of it.
"We didn't have a delivery driver come in yesterday because a lot of people don't have the driveways and stuff cleared out for us to get there safely with the flowers," said Roskilly. "So we called them and said, 'Hey, you know, is it OK if we just deliver them tomorrow, and you know we'll throw in some chocolates or something for the day late?' You know, because we don't want people to think they're not important either, we just safely couldn't get there."
Roskilly says the shop had more than 100 deliveries scheduled.
While their biggest seller is red roses, they offer plenty of other flowers and items.
"We do all the mixed different arrangements. I would say we probably have somewhere in between in the same realm of like 100 of each of those, and this year we added preserved roses," said Roskilly. "So they're roses that are real, but they've gone through a process where they preserved them and will last from a year to three years. So we added that whole section this year. We also have the sweets, the candy counter that we have."
Roskilly's advice for next Valentine's Day: Order ahead to get exactly what your special someone wants.