PlantPop NYC: A visit with Uprooted Flower Truck
PlantPop NYC is a new segment of PlantPop. We hired a young filmmaker from New York, Stephen Farris, to go find cool plant stories in his neighborhood.
We might take for granted the ease of getting fresh blooms in our area, but for city-dwellers they can be more difficult to come by.
It’s exactly this predicament that motivated Ashley Custer and Kristin Heckler to open the Uprooted Flower Truck in spring of 2015.
Kristin says that her and Ashley wanted to be able to give busy people an easy way to get some flowers.
“People said that they thought it would be really nice to have a flower truck so they could just look at the options without feeling pressure.”
Considering how popular the food truck movement has been, Ashley wondered if something like that could work in New York, but with plants.
The biggest motivation for starting a campaign to get the Uprooted Flower Truck was the lack of options in the New York floral scene. Ashley and Kristin saw that getting flowers in the city meant either spending a lot of money or settling on lackluster blooms.
From their Kickstarter, they pointed out that it wasn’t the florists’ fault that prices were so high; it was the cost of rent.
“Florists are forced to build high NYC rent and waste costs into their prices, which results in higher cost for the customer. The only other options are poor quality flowers and cookie cutter designs.”
With the truck, the pair is able to cut down on the costs of running a business in the city.
With Ashley’s extensive experience in the floral industry and Kristin’s tenacity, the two make a great team.
“I love flowers, I love working with them. I feel it’s a little bit of art therapy each day.”
For more information about the Uprooted Flower Truck or to find out where the truck will be located on a given day visit their website here.
