A Blossom Shop in Bayville, New Jersey, asked 2020 Petal It Forward recipients to donate a non-perishable food item in exchange for a bouquet and plans to do the same for this year’s event. The food items are donated to a local food bank. Photo courtesy of Stacey Cofka.
While most of the bouquets handed out during this year’s Petal It Forward event will be given with no reciprocal expectations, Stacey Cofka, a second-generation florist and owner of A Blossom Shop in Bayville, New Jersey, takes a slightly different approach.
Cofka hands out her Petal It Forward bouquets in exchange for a donation.
“If someone brings me a non-perishable food product to donate to a local food bank, then they are paying it forward and I am paying it forward,” Cofka says. “We are helping each other out.”
Cofka and her team have participated in Petal it Forward, the Society of American Florists’ annual goodwill initiative, since its inception in 2015. Each year she has traded her flowers for food, conducting the campaign at her storefront. She plans to do the same at the Oct. 20 event this year.
Cofka worked for 12 years in marketing in Atlantic City while working towards her master’s degree. In 2004, she returned to Bayville and purchased one of her parents’ three flower shops.
She puts her marketing skills to work and uses materials from SAF to promote her store’s Petal It Forward campaign. In addition to a blurb on her store’s sign that faces a major highway, she uses her business’s Facebook page to make her South Jersey community aware of her bouquet barter.
“This month I will start teasing it and it will start getting shared. We get a great response just on social media,” Cofka says.
While the event doesn’t generate revenue itself, Cofka says it raises awareness about her business in the community, and she has found that people who received the donated flowers have returned to become paying customers.
“Happens all the time,” she says.
Cofka isn’t concerned about getting flowers or the increased cost of flowers for this year’s event because she says placed her order in August. In addition, her wholesaler, Delaware Valley, offers Petal It Forward bouquets at a discounted price and that cost is part of her marketing budget, Cofka says.
Despite the stress that COVID-19 presented in 2020, Cofka says her Petal it Forward campaign last year was a huge success.
“The need was definitely there last year because of the pandemic and with a lot of people unemployed. I was really surprised how many people donated last year,” she says. “I wasn’t really expecting a lot because of the pandemic. Actually, it was the most food we ever had donated last year.”
Pam Donovan, ministry and administrative services coordinator for St. Paul’s Lutheran Church in the neighboring town of Beachwood, New Jersey, said she was delighted with the amount of food that Cofka’s shop collected.
“She had a whole delivery van filled with food,” Donovan recalled of last year’s donation. The gift was greatly appreciated because the small food pantry saw an increase in families needing help.
“I think it’s great,” Cofka says. “We’ve had customers come in with one can, but we get people who come in with two or three bags of food and you are just moved by the generosity of the community.”
Register for Petal It Forward online. SAF members receive access to resources such as sign and mask templates, press releases, media talking points, social media messages and shareable graphics, printable flower cards and more.
Nona Nelson is a contributing writer for the Society of American Florists.