Local shops get some Valentine's Day love

With the Valentine's Day spirit in the air this week, two Saratoga businesses are staying stocked with enough gifts to keep loved ones happy.

This Friday, the Flower Pot florist will celebrate nearly 30 years of Valentine's Day, while Sweet Marie's bakeshop will celebrate its first experience with the holiday. Owning the only flower shop in the Platte Valley, Connie McGuire said she has already made many Valentine's Day sales and orders.

She named Valentine's Day and Mother's Day as the two biggest holidays for sales at the Flower Pot, which she opened in April of 1984.

"For years, Valentine's Day was encroaching on and catching up with Mother's Day, and now it has finally beat Mother's Day as our most popular holiday," McGuire said. "This is the second year it exceeded it, and usually on average we'll have around 200 people, including calls and walk-ins, for Valentine's Day."

McGuire said there is much preparation involved with their big holidays that involve gifts.

"There is a lot of prep work because a lot of additional work on these big holidays," McGuire said. "Some of the stuff we had to order back in November to get things in, like Valentine's Day cards and candies, flowers, vases and containers. There's a lot of prep work involved to get there, and we've got to be prepared to be hit. We get hit pretty well, so we get extra helpers in here."

McGuire said one or multiple red roses are the number one sale around Valentine's Day, but that other colors of roses, different flower arrangements, candy, chocolate, stuffed animals, balloons, plants and Valentine's Day cards are also big sellers for the holiday.

"We also sell a lot of candy, like Russell Stover candy, and lots of other fresh arrangements," she said. "Of course, we usually darn near sell out of our Valentine's cards, so we carry a lot of them. People will also find different gifts here and there on the shelves, and there's a lot of variety."

McGuire said she looks forward to Friday, when people for the Chariot Races first show up in town.

"People will be here for the cutter race weekend and the dinners they have out, so it should be a good weekend," she said. "Thursday should also be just as busy as Friday, with a lot of walk-ins, and the phone and credit card machine going nuts."

With the big rush going on, McGuire said she is prepared to have enough roses on hand for customers. Besides her best-selling red roses, she mentioned lavender, yellow, white, cream and two different shades of pink as other popular rose colors.

"For a little town like this, it can vary between 600 and 700 roses sold," McGuire said. "Last year we had over 800 roses and didn't quite sell them all, but we always have over that many just in case it's a bigger year. I don't think we've turned anybody down, because we always make sure that we have enough. People also like to get a mixed combination of roses, and some will say they've never seen roses of all our different colors."

Alongside calls, walk-ins and order pickups, McGuire said the Flower Pot has also been busy with multiple order deliveries to homes and businesses.

"We deliver all over, even to Encampment and Riverside, and I have a delivery gal for the whole week because we can't afford to leave," she said. "It gets so busy in here, it's like assembly line work."

While the Flower Pot has experienced the love-filled holiday nearly 30 times, this year marks the first Valentine's Day experience for Sweet Marie's Bakeshop in Saratoga. Sweet Marie's Owner and baker Marie Christen said many people have called or stopped in to pre-order her Valentine's Day chocolate truffles and chocolate-covered strawberries to pick up this week.

Her truffle flavors include creations such as white chocolate passion fruit, dark chocolate cocoa dusted truffle, coconut macadamia truffle and mimosa ganache filled truffle.

"We had a lot of orders for both the truffles and strawberries," Christen said. "That's why the pre-ordering is important, so that way I can have enough for everybody and then some for walk-ins. I'm only predicting that it's mostly men calling in for their partners, but I've been getting other calls for orders. It's nice to see mothers calling in for goodies for their children."

Christen said she expected another big rush after what happened around Thanksgiving time, when she was selling her special Thanksgiving pies. After receiving so many orders then and now, she said she plans to make more specialty treats for future holidays.

"For Thanksgiving I thought I'd do only about 30 pies, but I ended up doing more than 65," she said. "That's why I wanted people to pre-order, so I could make sure I had enough materials for everybody. Everyone that pre-ordered came in when they said they would, so we didn't have to call anybody, and we also sold a few extras for walk-ins. I think most people already knew what we were going to do, so we expected that same thing for Valentine's Day."

 

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