The Koerner Office - Business Ideas and Deep Dives with Chris Koerner - Deep dive on the front porch floral business.⏐Ep. #120

Episode Date: January 20, 2025

I sat down with Darryl Knight, the owner of From Porch Flora (https://frontporchflora.com), a seasonal flower subscription business, about how he built his company. We start by discussing Darryl's background in landscaping and horticulture, and how that led him to this idea. Darryl shares the story of his initial business idea, which involved greenhouses growing plants in "plant pies" and delivering them to nurseries, then he explains how he pivoted to buying plants from greenhouses, pre-assembling them into inserts, and swapping them out seasonally for his customers, which made his business far more scalable. Darryl also shares insights on the financial side, including his revenue, costs, and net margins, and the challenges of managing a seasonal business with fluctuating labor needs. Finally, we talk about the surprising way that he started offering pumpkins, based on my previous episode, and lastly his great idea to expand by partnering with realtors. Links for Front Porch Flora's Social MediaFollow them on Facebook: www.facebook.com/frontporchfloraFollow them on Instagram: www.instagram.com/frontporchflora  Timestamps below. Enjoy!---Watch this on YouTube instead here: tkopod.co/p-ytAsk me a question on or off the show here: http://tkopod.co/p-askLearn more about me: http://tkopod.co/p-cjkLearn about my company: http://tkopod.co/p-cofFollow me on Twitter here: http://tkopod.co/p-xFree weekly business ideas newsletter: http://tkopod.co/p-nlShare this podcast: http://tkopod.co/p-allScrape small business data: http://tkopod.co/p-os---00:00 Highlights 00:35 Introduction and Guest Background00:42 Inspiration Behind the Business01:17 Business Model Evolution01:57 Guest's Professional Background04:42 Challenges and Pivots07:42 Current Business Model14:35 Customer Base and Marketing Strategies20:16 Seasonal Operations and Labor22:53 Scalability and Future Plans27:33 Customer Retention and New Ideas29:06 Conclusion and Contact Information

Get to the math yesterday, we were making about $60 on each plant there. Everybody who sells a house usually gives the client a gift, and I think it's a great way for a realtor to be front of mind four times of year. Every time I come and change out the flowers, they're going to think like, oh, okay, right, you know, Darrell's got me to those. Most guys cut grass because it leads to bigger jobs. With the flowers, I'm getting the customer base, but I have far less overhead. If you can avoid changing the place, unloading a truck, if you're just pre-building everything,

and swapping, it's very scalable. Why don't we just start by you telling everyone who you are and what you do? So my name is Darrell Knight, and I own a business called From Porch Flora. I started in 2020. It actually kind of got the idea while I was on a fishing trip. We had met a guy who invented, it's a tray that you can kind of grow multiple different plants together. It's called a plant pie. And so he made this invention, and we were originally kind of talking with him

to see if he was looking for investors, that kind of hit a dead end. And we kind of backed into doing the seasonal flower subscription. So we wanted to do something with seasonal, with subscription-based like billing. So that kind of started our business idea. Originally, we were thinking if we could get greenhouses to grow things pre-made for us and then have them deliver to different nurseries, the nursers would be open to us driving, you know, foot traffic to their traps. Because if they're there to pick up our stuff, then they might be there, you know, they might buy extras while they're there. What it end up being was we buy from greenhouses, the plants,

before they get to a nursery. I pre-assemble everything in a container, and then I just swap out old container for new container. and then that's inside a fancier planter. So backing up, what was your background before this? Like, what gave you the confidence or the experience to want to start a front porch floral business? Yeah, so I guess that would have been a better way to start. I started landscaping.

I was 12. Nice. And then I really got into doing like masonry landscape design, like whole projects at 14. So I started working with another company on Long Island called SK Complete. So I worked for them until I was 22. And then during that time when I, my college years, I went to a school in Long Island called Farmingdale. I got my associate's degree in horticulture and landscape design. And then from there, I actually took a small hiatus, became a police officer for a period of time.

And then I always wanted to get back into the like the horticulture side when I was older. There's also a period of time where I worked at a nursery. So I have the background in plants and my actually, my experience at the nursery is really where I kind of felt like I was sort of onto something where a lot of customers would come to me and ask for guidance and we kind of map out their whole property and see how we could put something together that looks sharp, but also like made sense as far as not putting the wrong plants. You're not going to put a shade plant in a full sun spot.

That's where I got that confidence, I guess, to go into something. something like this. What was the name of the pie product that the guy was inventing? Oh, the plant pie. Plant pie. What about that just like sounded like a really good idea to you? It's called a combo. And usually it's like two or three plants that are already pre-grown together from the greenhouse. What we liked about the plant pie was the way that he had, he made this, I guess, unique design on the bottom of the tray. So the roots kind of self-prune. And it was very shallow. So you're talking about maybe two inches of soil. If you're

think about this, if you had, if you wanted to plant flowers in a bed of mulch, you know, you still have to, you have to pull your mulch back and still dig down into the soil to plant. With something like the plant pie, you could literally just pull the mulch back, put the plant pie down, push the mulch back, and you're on to planting the next plant. And it'll root within a week, almost like sod. You know, we were like, oh, this is almost like sod for flowers. What is it made out of? This is plastic, just a plastic tray. Interesting. So that's just like, your. background cause you to just immediately fall in love with that idea, which ultimately led you

to what you're doing today? Correct. Interesting. It's so funny, like looking back and connecting the dots and it all makes sense in looking back, but at the time, you're just, it kind of seems like you're just hopping from thing to thing, right? Definitely evolved from first year to where I'm at now. It's evolved quite a bit. COVID hits. And you want to start like a, did it start as like a more traditional flower subscription business and then evolved into what it is today. Yeah. We originally were looking for something a little bit more passive than what it's become. You know, we were thinking that if we could kind of get these deals, like these orders in, and then the greenhouses are basically fulfilling orders, then delivering to their usual

nurseries. And then it more so evolved into a service business. Okay. So you, you basically wanted to go out and find customers and then go find a nursery and say, hey, we're going to buy directly from you, but we want you to do a little more work. And did you want them to deliver the flowers or they were just going to prepare them and then you deliver them? They were going to prepare them. So like a typical greenhouse will grow thousands of flowers and then different nurseries will place orders for a few hundred. So we wanted to kind of get into that mix where the order would come in through my website and then maybe have a few options of different arrangements. The customer replaces the order.

The greenhouse grows it. And then the finished product gets delivered to. the nursery and the customer's required to then go to the nursery and pick it up. Okay. Okay. So why didn't that work? Because it was just too much of a change for the nurseries? No.

So the nursery and the nursery that I grew up working at, they were open to the idea because obviously they want that extra foot traffic there. However, there's also a requirement for them as well because the customer would have to show either a QR code or receipt. Once it's, once it, if it started to turn it to something larger, you know, I think, the nursery itself would then almost need somebody to dedicate to making sure that things were paid for, stuff like that. So that was a hurdle. The biggest hurdle really was that plant pie tray, it didn't really catch on with those greenhouses.

They like things that could be. So the plant pie, there's two sizes, but it doesn't fit in anything. whereas you could buy like a little four-inch square planter and that fits into a tray, you know, and you can get 15 on a tray. So the plant pie doesn't really work like that. Everything is like the shelves for shipping. They're all square or rectangle. So sort of the reason why it wasn't catching on was the nurseries had already heard about it.

They just weren't jumping all over it. It wasn't standardized enough for their procedures, right? Yeah, correct. It just, I think we were trying to kind of fit a round peg through a square hole. Yeah, I mean, literally. Yeah. Literally. Okay.

So you kind of built the business around the, you said, all right, we're not going to event in, we're not going to invest in the plant pie. We're going to start a floral subscription business around the plant pie. And then then the greenhouse has said, eh, this doesn't really work for us for X, why or Z reason. So then you pivoted into doing it ourselves really. Okay. You pivoted just to a more traditional model then. Correct. So then it started with we were doing the planters at everyone's house. And I did that for the first year. And then I pivoted again and I switched to doing it as an insert. So what I would do is I would buy a planter. So I'll buy a whatever like a $30 planter from Lowe's.

I will get an insert that fits inside of it. And then I'll fill up halfway with mulch. And then all the inserts I build at my house. So I'll pre-assemble everything all in one shot. And then go out and then my driver will take out the old insert with the old arrangement that's starting to fade and we'll pop in a new one. Okay. And that's the same business model you're doing today. Yes.

Some of my customers, a little more affluent customers, they still, they have their own planters and there is no insert that's going to fit there. So we have to, you know, bring a truck and make it right there on the spot. But I prefer and I will be pushing again this year to convert almost all of my customers to an insert style. I don't charge anything for the planter. I own the planter. If you cancel the service, we'll come collect it. I find it works well. And most people are not very picky about the planter.

Okay. Okay. So these planters, is there one on each side of the door then? Or is there more than that? Most houses do too on the front porch. Okay. So you fill it up with mulch. And is that just to get the plant off the ground more? So the way the insert works is it, you know, if you don't put something underneath it, it's going to sink too far low where you wouldn't see the plants much. You want that insert to sit right at, you know, flush or just a little low. The reason why I use mulch instead of like soil for summer, which is our longest season, the plants will actually root for. through the insert and into the material underneath. With soil, it could be very difficult to get it out. With mulch, mulch it will pull right out, even if it's rooted through. But the plant stays in the insert.

Correct. Right. Which is sitting inside the planter and the insert sitting on top of the mulch. Correct. And if the roots go through the insert into the mulch, no big deal. You can pull it out with no problem. Yeah, pop right out. Do you have any direct competitors in your area doing exactly this?

Or are they doing more traditional floral delivery? There's a few businesses on Long Island that do like seasonal color changes. I don't consider myself very big, but I think I might be, I think on top as far as maybe the numbers. I think a few of them seem like almost like hobbyists and they stay in kind of like a localized area. Okay. So how often are you swapping out the plants? Four times a year. Okay.

When they start to fade or just on a schedule no matter what? They're on a schedule no matter what. So even if they do look good, I'm still going to take them out because they're about to stop looking good. Where do they go when you take them out? Some of the plants that we use for the spring, they can be reused for the summer. There's not a lot, but there are some. So typically, like, if you were to look at, if you went through the seasons, like there's a pansies. I don't know if you're familiar with that, but pansies is like a cool season flower.

So spring pansies, they're going to kind of go to, they're going to look like as soon as it gets real hot. So we would, you know, take that out. And that's basically done. There's not much what we would do with that. Whereas if you had maybe like a petunia, that's something that if it looked good, you might be able to repurpose that in another planter. Okay.

But usually, like most of them, you're just kind of throwing out. It's just done. Right. Yeah. Okay. What are you big sellers?

Petunias, pansies. Do you do tulips or anything? We stopped doing tulips because the bulb plants, they look awesome when you put them in and they're in bloom. But they just, the rise and fall for those is too. fast. So I usually avoid, I usually avoid those. So for me, spring is like a renunculus, pansies, creeping Jenny, if it's available, it's like a spiller. I think I mentioned petunias already.

So I always try to kind of switch it up because I want the customers to get like to experience new things. This is not getting the same exact thing over and over again and make sure that they're always getting something different that way you can get at a grocery store. Yeah. Okay. So that makes sense. Honestly, that's my major competitor is, is dealing with, like kind of the cheaper option at the grocery store. Smart. Is there a margin difference on any of these plants, or does it really make no difference to you? The majority of my four-inch plants, they're usually about the same price within a dollar or two.

And then my centerpieces, that's really where you can kind of trip up if you're not careful, because some of them get pretty pricing. Okay. And you're buying these directly from the greenhouses? Correct. Yeah. Okay. Have you thought about vertically integrated?

and growing them yourself, or is that just a completely different business, too much headache? I have. I live on two acres, so I do have space, so I still have a full-time job. And I think I'm just not, yeah, I think I'm just not there yet as far as having the time to do that. Yeah. What are your pricing plans? A small planter, which is up to 12 inches, that's $90 a season per planter. A medium is going to be $112 a season per planter, and then a large is $1.45. and then from there it's custom pricing. Okay.

So you're looking at like five to 700 to 800 a year per customer? Yeah. Yep. We have about a hundred. Okay. Is there any long-term contract or anything or just kind of? No, they can cancel any time.

The only time that there's any fee with the cancellation is if they can't, if they cancel and the plants have already been purchased. I mean, typically this time of year, we might see some, some people fall off or just fail to renew. but other than that, there's no like a hard contract that anybody would have to follow. Okay. And then you said 100.

Is that how many customers you have? Yeah, that's about it's awesome. All right. If you were watching this clip right now, you are watching this on YouTube. And if you are a fan of podcasts, please check on my podcast while you're at it because sometimes I have podcasts that aren't on YouTube and sometimes I have YouTube that aren't on podcasts. So check out the Kernar office on any podcast platform or you can go to tkopod.com.

Also, my newsletter will throw that in there. There are no ads. It's weekly. It's different content than my podcast and YouTube. Newsletter.com. You'll see the link and we'll see you there. So what I did is I set it up so that you could do two seasons if you wanted or you could do three or you could do four. And the reason I did that is you could have a single season subscription for just the plants around the pool.

You're not going to do four seasons around the pool, but you most likely would want the summer covered every year and not have to call me and tell me. Some customers also, they just want maybe like a summer full and they don't want to, do spring and winter. So my busiest seasons are summer, which is the first season that you could get a if you're starting off with just two seasons, then summer would be the first season that you would get flowers. Okay. So summer and fall are really my busiest two seasons and those two are about a hundred accounts. Okay. And how many seasons does your average customer choose? Most customers are at four. Oh, nice. Okay. And how? How do you? How do you? And how? How do you? And how? And how? You know, How are you finding customers today versus how did you find them in year one and two?

We were getting mostly through Facebook. Ads are organic? It was a lot of friends and family to start for sure. Okay. And that was really where we got our content to post. And most of it then still was coming through Facebook. And that kind of made me think that that was our demographic was like a little bit on the older side. As of late, it's really transitioned more to Instagram converting the most.

So are you seeing like more millennial customers now? Yes. On Facebook. Okay. Correct. Yeah. Are you doing any paid ads or all or just organic, just posting content and it comes in? There's a, I don't know.

I don't think this is countrywide. Is it something called stroll? They have it somewhat in more affluent neighborhoods. There's stroll Nisikwag. So we just did like a paid ad through them. Is that a magazine? It's a magazine. So it's a magazine that's meant to.

kind of be like it's for the residents. So the residents of those towns all get it for free. And it's funded. It's basically subsidized by all the advertisers. So you kind of pay for the space. So have you seen that actually bring in business? No. So this year will be my first year doing that.

Okay. Okay. I would imagine just by the nature of the product that you'd see some referrals because friends come over and they see them and like, oh, I love your flowers right at the door. It's like, what did you get those? Oh, I get them from Darrell. Matter of fact, I mean, through watching your show or your podcast, we started the pumpkins

last year. I was hoping. We already had the customer base in place. That was big as far as just getting eyeballs on that really got us like a lot of attention. I went from not thinking I would sell any because I was just looking to kind of get some photos and put out content and see what the feedback was to selling like 14, 14 different packages in a couple of weeks. and then that converted again into like recurring customers for Christmas season.

And then one of them is now, like it is a real good account for next year overall. That's amazing. Is that how you found me from that piece of content or was it before then? Nope. Pumpkins was it. That's amazing. Yeah. There's a lot of people that started a porch pumpkin business based on that.

Like I post a lot of stuff, right? But I think that one had one of the higher percentages of people actually taking action, which is super cool. It's funny because I actually met somebody else. I had listed some of the pumpkin packages on Facebook Marketplace just to see how that out panned out. And another entrepreneur from Pennsylvania, he tried to kind of like undercover me at first a little bit and asked like the pricing. But when I looked him up, I saw that he was doing the same thing in Pennsylvania. So a couple like young guys, they do like party rentals and stuff too.

And so we ended up just kind of like chopping it up over the phone a little bit. Yeah. I mean, you're not competitors, right? So why not? I said, I said, listen, we're not. competitors, you want to just talk about it on the phone. So he was like, you know, he was all into it. And he seemed like a good group of guys in Pennsylvania doing that. So that's awesome. Have you thought about doing Christmas decoration on front porch? We started doing that. So that kind of

inspired in the Christmas stuff. And I saw the things that you had put on there for Christmas. We ended up moving away from it. I never pulled. I pulled the trigger on the supplies and starting to create it. But what I ended up doing was I kind of wanted to do something very similar to the pumpkins where that it was like, instead of the pumpkin spilling down the front steps, it was like little trees coming down the steps. So we ended up doing yard displays and basically Christmas trees on porches. And I don't know if you have access to our Instagram, but you'll see, like, we had, we actually just took like their grow bags and we wrapped them in ribbon.

And they came out pretty good. Oh, I see it right here. Yeah. That's awesome. You just kept them in the bag. So that's a grow bag. It's meant to be for vegetables. But what we would do is we would brace the tree upright.

And then I would fill the bag in with soil just to keep it heavy and help hold the tree sand in place. And then we wrap it in ribbon. And then that was basically it. And then you just take it back at the end of the season? That was it. Yeah. For that season, I decided to offer like a free cleanup. So I wasn't charging like I was charging with the pumpkins to remove it.

Okay. How did you determine how to put it? priced this. Did you look at a competitor and how they did it or yeah? I would say that this year the trees, I probably underpriced them, to be honest. Really, I mean anything, anything in your business. I would try to create a formula for like the size of each planter. That never really worked. So what we ended up doing was just calculating what we were spending on soil, the material, the plant material, and then manpower to make it and deliver it. And then kind of figuring out like where we wanted to be, like what our margin we wanted to be after that.

So, I mean, for me with the planters, I think I did the math yesterday, we were making about $60 on each planter. Nice. So what would you say your net margins are overall in the business? The net margin is going to be, what, my total for the year? Yeah, your net profit. Yeah, total profit as a percentage basis. Is this, sir? 60 times, even if we go low ball. I mean, each season we're probably making about 10,000.

Nice. Do you have any employees? So I have a hard time hanging on to them because we are very seasonal. I had one woman who worked for me. She was a little bit older. So we worked with her for two years. And then I actually just felt too guilty to keep pushing her through it. Yeah.

Just because it's physically demanding? It can be. I think it's just a lot of bending down and getting back up. And then, you know, when it gets cold, it's kind of miserable. And, you know, she's pushing herself through, like, arthritis and bad knees. But she was with me for two years. And then I have another younger guy who works with me. He's been great.

He's been with me for two years as well. And then this past year, it expanded into actual, like, larger landscape projects. And that's where, that's where. that's where I'm more so having an issue with just keeping guys around because the work is not steady enough. And I think, you know, when I'm retired from my full time, I'll be able to kind of keep those guys around. But for now, it's, I really need to target people who are kind of either part-time employed or, you know, kind of winding down in their careers. Yeah. It's like a great foot in the door business where you, it's kind of a lower ticket item. You earn their

trust and then you could upsell. I kind of identified two years ago. So growing up and my family doing the landscaping, they are running, you know, truck, trailer, team of guys, huge fuel bills, huge insurance bills to cut grass. The prices for grass have not really gone up even since I was cutting grass 15, 16 years ago. So, but most guys cut grass because it leads to bigger. jobs. With the flowers, I'm getting the customer base. They know that I know how to plant what looks good, the design aspect, but I have far less overhead. So for me, this seems like a great

foot in the door for that industry as well. So I started seeing in 2021, people were asking me more and more to do like, oh, well, can you plant in my garden? And I was just referring the jobs away. And then 22, I started to take on more landscaping jobs. 23, again, same thing. And then last year, we started taking on bigger and bigger jobs. And what is your full-time job? I'm a police officer. Okay. You did that before and then you went back to it or you've been doing it this whole time? I've been doing it since I was 22. Okay. If you were to like go all in on this and like really go hard and try to scale it just on Long Island, how scalable would you say that it is if you really wanted to acquire a thousand customers? If I wanted to acquire a thousand customers, I mean scalable, I think the flower pots, I think are very scalable. If you can avoid doing, get out, changing the plants, unloading a truck. If you're just pre-building everything and swapping, it's,

very scalable. But then after that, you're going to need like a very large team. If you're going to houses, unloading, ripping out, it's, you really lose a lot of time like that, especially in the winter. Yeah. Every season, how many hours of labor would you say it takes to fulfill your service? Let's say you don't do anything hands on. You're just like on a computer working part time, helping arranging logistics.

And you have an employee managing 100 clients, how many, for the three months, how many total hours would you think that takes? Not like per week, not per month, but total. I would say we could do, if I have all my plants in front of me, I could probably have those built no more than two days, which has the inserts. So let's call that 16 hours.

Okay, yep. And then I would say you would have another week then of driving. around. So there's 40 hours. So you're 56 hours. Okay. But the hard part is that's spread over three months. So it's hard to find someone that can really commit to that, right? Because they can't rely on that. Yeah, that is my, so spring is great because spring will carry me right through to summer, especially with the landscaping now, where people are looking to do plantings and things like that. But then when you look to, you know, like, well, late summer, it really slows down. Yeah. And that's where guys who are, you know, they're looking for, they're looking to work. That's where you lose

them. Okay, so 56 hours of labor to fulfill enough plants for one season, right? Correct. Yeah. Okay. So if you're paying someone $25 an hour, that's like $13, $14,500 after payroll taxes. So theoretically, if you're profiting $10,000 in a season, ignoring all of the complexities with it being unstable, very seasonal, you could make good margins. Like even farming out the hard work, you could still have really good net profit margins on this, right? Yeah. So a thousand customers would be 10 times as much, maybe even more profit because you'd be at more scale and they could rely on on more hours. Like maybe in the off season, they could do a little more marketing during the season. They could do more logistical stuff, yeah? Right. Do you think if you were to like ramp up

Facebook ads or really go hard on the customer acquisition side, you could, ignoring all the logistical difficulties, you could find a way to acquire enough customers to really scale. Not that you should. I'm just curious how scalable it is. Right now, like I was saying before, for this year, I want to try to push as many existing customers that are on the custom accounts where I have to get out and do it there. If I can push more and more of those customers, the existing ones, into an insert type situation, then I think for me, then I would look to start growing again because I'm at,

I'm at a point right now where, especially for winter, where I'm almost not able to get it done before Christmas time. So that is really the season that I'm most concerned about fulfilling. And I really want to make sure that for customer service, we're top notch because I don't think this business really, you know, it's not going to make your, it's not going to improve the quality of your life other than you know you love how your house looks when you walk up right but i want to be known like as a as a top-notch customer service company so with that said if i can if i can convert a lot of those accounts into inserts i think my ability to fulfill more accounts is going to i think then kind of it'll open up for me right now i'm i'm nervous to actually sink in a lot more

effort into customer acquisition when I'm close to max out being that I have that full-time job. Yeah, because you get to that point where it's like you've got, you either have to stay where you're at or go really hard because or else you end up in the messy middle, right? Yeah. And I'm, I'm like playing with the messy middle right now. You're flirting with it. Yeah. Okay. What is your churn like? How many, how long do you keep customers on average? I don't know, maybe 20 customers in the almost five years. Most people are I really, I've had two customers that I've let go myself.

I would say, yeah, it's about 20 customers total that I've lost. What a great business. The customers that I typically lose are the ones that it's a gift for a family member. Okay, yeah. They're not really invested in it. They're not invested in it. And, you know, it's nice, but, you know, maybe next year you don't want to spend, you know, $450 bucks on, you know, flowers for your mom.

Maybe you want to do something different. and I get that too. Yeah. It's nice for people to gift it to others, but it also means higher likelihood of them churning. Yes. I think I actually would really like to do is try to get in with some realtors because I think, you know,

everybody who sells a house usually gives the client a gift. And I think it's a great way for a realtor to like be front of mind four times of year. Every time I come and change out the flowers, they're going to think like, oh, okay, right. That is a great idea. Yeah. You need to lean into that. That's a really good idea. What is the average home value on Long Island? half a million dollars all right so that's

$15,000 average commission so 500 bucks would be a tiny fraction of that yeah that's a good idea yeah I mean you could sell it to the realtors as an investment you know you're going to be top of mind you're going to be their favorite realtor for the rest of their lives

yeah or at least four seasons yeah seriously well this is an awesome business Daryl I appreciate you taking the time if people want to learn from you, where can they find you? Well, I mean, we're on Instagram, we're on Facebook, so those are probably the best two ways to get in touch with us.

Yeah, I'd say that's probably the best way to do it. Front porchflora.com? Yep. Well, thank you. This is a great business. I appreciate you taking the time. Awesome. Thank you.

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