Why Do Florists Charge To Arrange Flowers?
You get on the phone and order red roses arranged in a vase with babies’ breath and greenery. The florist tells you it will cost you $74.95 and will be ready for you to pick up in fifteen minutes. On your way home from work you stop into the floral shop to pick up your arrangement. Drawn in by the colorful, fragrant masses of flowers in the display cooler you decide to step inside and take a look around while the clerk wraps up your purchase. Inside the walk-in cooler you see buckets of roses and other cut flowers for sale by the stem. The placards on the buckets of roses read “$3.50 per stem” and the buckets of other flowers have similar signs with different prices. Looking around, you see babies’ breath for $2.50 per stem and leather leaf fern for twenty-five cents per stem. The gears start turning in your head and something just doesn’t add up. Your dozen roses has $42 worth of roses in it, about $5 worth of babies breath in it, and maybe $3 worth of fern. The vase couldn’t cost $24
