What's in the Cooler
A podcast for and about independent florists. A florist brings one problem from the shop, and we talk through real options together.
Hosted by Rachel, 22 years in floral software including at FTD, and Brooke, who builds the tools.
The format
One shop, one problem, and the time to think it through
A florist brings one problem from the shop. One, not a season's worth. Usually the one that has been sitting on the counter for a month because there has never been an afternoon quiet enough to solve it.
We talk through real options together, out loud, with the trade offs said plainly. Some of those options cost money. Some of them are an afternoon of work and a decision nobody has made yet.
Then we take the time to hear how the shop got started, and how flower giving has changed in that community over the years. That part is not filler. It is usually where the answer turns up.
Every shop has a history, and most of the pressure on it now came from somewhere you can point at. Why the history is in every episode
It is an hour of business thinking for people who already know their craft.
Where the show starts
Three things we hear in almost every shop
Rachel opened with these three. Each one already has something on this site that answers part of it, so you do not have to wait for an episode to get started.
The order that comes in after 4pm
Somebody else took the order, set the price, chose the flowers, and passed you a fraction of what the customer paid. Your name is on the delivery.
Read my statement →Product photos that do not do the arrangement justice
The work looks beautiful standing in the cooler and flat on a phone screen. What needs help is the photograph, and the room behind it.
Open WholeCut Studio →A customer three blocks away who never knew the shop was there
They searched for a florist, an answer came back, and the shop down the street was not in it. That is a findability problem with a measurable fix.
Run the Visibility Check →None of those are design problems. These are some of the most talented people I know. They are business problems, and they are solvable. Rachel, co-host
Why we started it
The first order came through the shop's own website
One shop we work with took its first order through a website it owns. It printed straight onto the order form the shop has used for twenty years, so nothing about the way the work gets done had to change.
What changed is where the order came from and how much of it reached the shop. Nobody needed a new logo to get there. Somebody needed to look at the route an order takes and ask who is standing in it.
That is the whole show. A real shop, a real decision, and an hour spent on the part that is actually costing money.
What we brought to it
A site the shop owns and can be found in, a read of the wire statement in the shop's own numbers, and photographs good enough to post the same day.
One shop. Your own statement and your own search results will read differently, which is the point of running them.
Join us for a free class.
Bring your wire statement. We walk through what it is really costing you, and how local shops are getting found again. The next class is Wednesday, October 21.
A podcast about the business side of a craft business.