My grandfather John and his younger brother Peter started the family flower business. They arrived from Greece separately in the early 1900s, and after running a shoe shine parlor and blocking hats on St. Marks Place they moved their enterprising spirit uptown to 18th Street in Manhattan and established the Royal Flower Shop. Eventually, one of the neon signs spelled out: "The Demetropolis Bros."
The first shop was a cover for the speakeasy in the back, Bellas's on Irving Place and 18th Street. Irving Place is a short street between Third Avenue and Park Avenue South, running from 14th Street to 20th Street.
In the era of Prohibition flower shops in the city served as covers for speakeasys. Pete Bellas's place became Pete's Tavern and is still there. The cracks in the hexagonal tiles on the floor outline the short depth of the flower shop. My father as a kid wound the huge regulator clock on the left that no longer works.
My grandfather and grandmother had four sons, two who became bartenders, one a career naval officer and my father, who was a Design engineer at the Brooklyn Navy Yard and who could not resist "helping out" at the flower shop after my grandfather passed away in 1956. The flower shop consumed my father's life, and eventually mine during my teenage years in the '60s.
I made deliveries, bought the flowers at the wholesalers on 28th Street, waited on customers, cleaned the store, and pretty much was an unpaid employee. There were no employees, only family. My father's brothers had nothing to do with the store.
I know what the numbers were of the era; cost of flowers, rent, overhead, sales. If there were profits it was what my great uncle and my father took out of the register. There was no bookkeeping, other than my preparation of bills for the few charge customers we had. I did the banking. There were virtually no credit cards them, and we didn't accept them anyway. Cash is king.
Eventually Prohibition ends and Bellas's needed the front of the place. The Royal flower shop moved to 202 Third Avenue, on the southwest corner of 18th Street. There were two entrances. One on Third Avenue and another on 18th Street. I always thought that was so cool.
It was good size store, and I have a photo of what it looked like as it peaked out from under the 3rd Avenue El. There was even a stop at 18th Street.
The family lived above the store at 148 East 18th Street, next to what was a famous apartment house, the Stuyvesant Apartments. General Custer's widow once lived at the Stuyvesant Apartments.
I never saw a set of books that anyone kept of the family business. I often wondered if anyone ever paid income taxes. When my grandfather passed away I remember my grandmother's Social Security checks came to the shop, one half of my grandfather's benefits. It's hard for me to believe anyone paid into Social Security, so the criteria for getting benefits may have just been being past 65. I have no idea.
Sunday's Metropolitan section of the NYT ran as store headlined: How a Bouquet of Roses Got to be $72. I dove in, and my mouth flew open.
No surprise that Ditmars Flower shop in Astoria is owned by Greeks, the Patrikis family. If Greeks were not in the flower business, they were running diners, luncheonettes, and once upon a time were furriers.
The $72 price for a dozen red roses didn't shock me. Not in 2024. I've long become aware of the vast price difference between the business in the 1960s and now a quarter of century into the 21st Century.
But until reading the article I never knew a flower business could generate sales of $150,000 to $300,000 a month!, employ 8 people at the minimum wage of $25 an hour, and sell 15,000! roses on Valentine's Day. 15,000! That's not a store. That's a 1,500 square foot factory. The Royal Flower shop never got anywhere near those numbers, even after adjusting for inflation. It was however a decent size store.
The reporter, Stefanos Chen tells us George Patrikis came into the family business by way of his father who first sold flowers in the subway and eventually opened a store in 1983. At 75 I have trouble realizing that 1983 is quite some time ago in some people's eyes, but not mine. It's yesterday.
The story breaks down all the ancillary expenses that drive the $72 price tag. George Patrikis tells us he gets his roses from Ecuador at $1.03, which to me sounds like a very low wholesale price.
Apparently Ecuador is the largest exporter of roses. Ours came by truck to the flower district on 28th Street and 6th Avenue from greenhouses somewhere in Pennsylvania; Roses by André, and depending on the length were generally 25-50¢ a stem. Triple XXX were the longest stems. And there were two types. American Beauty, a dark red, the most expensive, and Better Times, a lighter shade and less expensive. Baldies were blooms that didn't open.
Someone in the Patrikis family must have majored in the rigors of cost accounting, perhaps at Pace University, because the article has the cost of all the ancillary expenses and items that go into the $72 price, up from $60.
Glass vases, that were once $1 are now $2. (We used paper mache tar-bottomed vases.) Cellophane paper (We used Say it with Flowers wrapping paper from a roll from Janine Paper and Twine; cost unknown) to wrap the arrangement went to $46 from $26 in 2019 for a 2,100' roll. Baby's breath (gypsophilia) from Colombia, 10 stems for $8 from $3. Lemon leaves, 20 stems from Washington State now $8.50 from $4.
The roses themselves are now $1.03 from 60¢ in 2019, but $2 apiece in 2020. (Some things apparently get cheaper.) A thousand sheet box of wax tissue paper is now $30 from $10. Cost of electricity that runs the shop and three refrigerators is now $2,500 a month from $1,200. Maintenance of the three refrigerators is now $3,000 a year, from prepandemic $600 a month.
We never calculated what the ancillary items cost. We just doubled the wholesale price and went from there. 100% markup. Our attention to these outside costs was never considered. And pretty much we didn't really make any money. If we had, I would have known about it.
The rent was $375 a month at the new shop at 206 Third Avenue, across the street from the old shop in what was then a new six-story apartment house at 157 East 18th Street built by Belkind and Brenner. The building is still there, dwarfed by the high-rise apartment houses that came after it on the other corners.
Our family went out of business in1975. The shop became Showcase Flowers, and eventually that closed and the corner store is now a coffee shop. The money is in selling coffee these days.
My father was hardly a businessman. He didn't charge the right amounts for what we sold. "Gave the store away" as one would say.
We always had trouble making even the $375 a month rent. My father would not pay on time and then when the new month came around we owed two months. He had trouble paying that. I was forever having to go the landlord's office on Lexington Avenue with what was then two months rent in cash or money orders to ward off eviction. Sometimes I had to meet the lawyer at Centre Street to stave off the Marshall notices. Loan shark (6 for 5 guys) loans kept us going.
I used to say my grandfather never bought any property—18' of frontage I used to say was all we needed—so therefore we were always renting. George Patrikis knows the value of owning the building they bought in 2003 when he tells the reporter, "the only ones who are going to be left (there were once 5 shops in his neighborhood) are the ones who own their buildings."
Truer words were never spoken.
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