It’s summertime and the living is easy, the song lyric goes. But life isn’t easy if there isn’t enough food to eat at home.
Royer’s annual food drive — Royer’s Stems Hunger — began in 2011 as a way to address some of that need. The food drive, which this year runs June 20-28, benefits the Central Pennsylvania Food Bank and the Greater Berks Food Bank.
Barry Spengler, Royer’s vice president of operations, visited Fox 43 Morning News today to explain how Royer’s Stems Hunger works. It’s pretty simple: give a nonperishable food item, get a free carnation (up to six per family per visit). Barry told Fox 43’s Amanda McCall that food donations are welcome no matter the quantity.
“Just a little of something is great,” Barry said. “We’ll give you a carnation. Some people say, ‘I don’t even want the carnations.’ Take the carnations. It’s bright for your house.”
To help kick off the food drive, the Royer’s Kids Club is holding a free event on Saturday. Participants ages 5 to 12 will get to make an arrangement — in an empty food can. Call your nearest Royer’s to register; time slots are available at 10 a.m., 2 p.m. and 3 p.m.
Barry showed off some other projects that children can make with flowers at home this summer.
The segment is available here:
Author: Neal
2014 Royer’s Kids Club birthday card design contest runs through July 12
For children, summer is for getting out of school, swimming, going on vacation.
And entering the 2014 Royer’s Kids Club birthday card design contest, which is open to children ages 5 to 12 in Berks, Cumberland, Dauphin, Lancaster, Lebanon and York counties.
The deadline to enter is July 12.
The winning design will be featured in the email birthday card that every kids club member receives on his or her special day.
The winning artist will receive a free flower delivery on his or her birthday.
The entry form may be downloaded at www.royers.com/kidsclub and dropped off at the nearest Royer’s store.
Royer’s Kids Club event June 21 to help kick off annual food drive
Royer’s annual food drive – Royer’s Stems Hunger – will take place June 20-28. The Royer’s Kids Club will help out with a special event on June 21 for children ages 5 to 12.
They are asked to donate a non-perishable food item as the price of admission and to bring an empty food can that they can fill with flowers to take home.
Participants also will receive a free balloon and have an opportunity to enter the kids club’s birthday card design contest for a chance to win a flower delivery.
Time slots are available at 10 a.m., 2 p.m. and 3 p.m. at each of our 17 stores in Berks, Cumberland, Dauphin, Lancaster, Lebanon and York counties. Registration is required by calling your nearest Royer’s store; click here for locations and contact information.
Royer’s Stems Hunger benefits the Central Pennsylvania Food Bank and the Greater Berks Food Bank.
Royer’s Stems Hunger food drive returns June 20-28
Royer’s annual food drive – Royer’s Stems Hunger – will return June 20-28 to collect non-perishable food items for the Central Pennsylvania Food Bank (see video below) and the Greater Berks Food Bank.
Customers are asked to bring nonperishable food donations to any Royer’s Flowers & Gifts store and place them in a collection barrel. For each food item, they will receive a free carnation, up to a maximum of six carnations per family per visit.
In its first three years, Royer’s Stems Hunger has collected nearly 5,000 pounds of food for the two food banks.
A thorny problem is solved by our annual May-June rose sale
“It was June, and the world smelled of roses. The sunshine was like powdered gold over the grassy hillside.”
― Maud Hart Lovelace, author
Indeed, June is National Rose Month, which coincides conveniently with the fact that roses are abundant this time of year.
That abundance explains why Royer’s has its rose sale every June.
As everyone knows, roses, especially red ones, are in great demand at Valentine’s Day. Hence, prices go up for florists and customers alike. Even then, however, the law of supply and demand comes into play.
There’s considerably less demand for yellow and orange and white roses, which become more affordable for us and, in turn, for our customers. This Valentine’s Day, we offered a “rainbow” mixed-rose (colors other than red) arrangement with babies breath, valued at $59.99, for $39.99.
A rose farm typically harvests its crop every six to eight weeks. Conveniently after the Valentine’s Day harvest comes the one for Mother’s Day. But while there’s another big crop of roses in late spring, there is not a corresponding holiday to absorb all of those flowers.
So we created our annual rose sale, which this year started May 17 and runs through June 22. We discount rose arrangements by $10 for one dozen and by $20 for two dozen, among other offers.
Yes, in June the world smells of roses.
There’s also the whiff of our annual rose sale in the air.
Coming up Rosie: costumed flower returns
If you passed our Lebanon store on May 8 or 11 (Mother’s Day), you might have seen something that no one has seen in a long time.
Our costumed rose, aka Rosie, made a couple of appearances, soaking up some sun (after a decade spent mostly in storage) and waving to passersby on South 12th Street. The costume dates at least to the 1990s.
Greg M. Royer, the store’s assistant manager, remembered the costume from a corporate meeting.
“And then it just kind of came to me,” he said, “maybe it would be a good way to get people in the door.”
Shannon Fink, the store manager, located the box containing the costume in the basement of one of the buildings within Royer’s corporate complex.
“Nobody wanted to volunteer to be Rosie at first,” Shannon said, quipping, “so somebody was forced to.”
That somebody was Greg, who’s giving the thumbs-up in the photo above. The costume also comes with a leotard, gloves and shoe coverings.
“I was hoping that somebody else would want to do it,” he said.
But the Royer family is nothing if not hands on when it comes to the flower business, so it should come as no surprise that Greg’s grandfather, Ken Royer, and uncle, Tom Royer, donned the costume in the past.
Greg, the great-grandson of the company’s founders, Hannah and Lester Royer, is the fourth generation of the family to work for Royer’s.
He’s the third generation to play Rosie.
We’ll walk down the aisle with you on your wedding day
Talk about a night at the museum. Instead of historical figures coming to life, this is a story about a would-be florist providing flowers for a wedding at a museum.
She left the flowers overnight in the museum’s old refrigerator – and they were frozen solid the morning of the wedding.
Not only are we familiar with this story, we lived it. At least the part where the woman came to us in a panic, and we made all-new bouquets, corsages and boutonnières in time for the nuptials.
It certainly wasn’t the first time we repaired or made new bouquets on short notice for a bride who bought her flowers elsewhere and was disappointed. Nor is it the only way that we can help to make a wedding day a little more special.
Wedding packages
We’ve been fortunate to provide flowers to many big weddings, but the typical expenditure for wedding flowers is between $400 and $1,000. We also offer affordable wedding packages.
Typically, we deliver two hours before a wedding to make sure that everything is where it should be.
Wedding service
We also offer a wedding service – for a fee, in some cases – that arrives an hour prior to the exchange of vows and stays until the bride has walked through the door and down the aisle.
A trained wedding consultant helps everyone with their flowers – and brings along a toolbox to help with just about any other need that might arise:
• Such as the time that the flower girl gave an enthusiastic hug to the bride, who was left with a nice bright lipstick stain in the middle of the gown. No problem. Our consultant pulled out her stain stick and removed the blemish.
• Or the time that the bride’s gown zipper ripped just before the wedding. Our consultant reached for her needle and thread.
• And the icing on the cake with all of this? It was the time that our consultant helped to ice the wedding cake moments before the reception.
Royer’s delivers Mother’s Day flower and plant tips to Fox 43
Barry Spengler, Royer’s vice president of operations, has a simple message when it comes to Mother’s Day.
“The key,” he told Fox 43’s Heather Warner, “just don’t forget Mom. That’s bad.”
Barry offered a number of options, from one or two roses wrapped up to a mixed bouquet in a vase to porch plants such as gerbera daisies or calla lilies.
Potted plants want to be outside, he said, and require a lot of water.
“People under-water these,” he said. “They need a lot of water. I get a gallon jug, fill it all the way up. And I usually dump most of the gallon a day on it. All of the excess will run out. …
“And every once a week, I usually add the fertilizer to the jug and fill it.”
You can view the entire segment below.
Annual plants add beauty: 3 tips for taking care of them
Colorful flowering annual baskets and pots provide an easy and inexpensive way to increase the beauty and enjoyment of outside living areas.
Annual plants are available in a wide range of colors and varieties, offering something for everyone.
Care is simple. Just keep these things in mind:
• Choose plants suited to the light levels they’re growing in:
- Sunny spots require plants that thrive in the sun, such as geraniums, petunias, marigolds, salvia, ageratum, alyssum and portulaca.
- Plants that do better with partial shade are begonias, impatiens, fuchsia and coleus.
• Container plants drink lots of water. Check them daily.
• To keep the blooms coming all season, add a water-soluble fertilizer a couple of times each week when watering. Plants also can be encouraged to bloom and stay “bushy” by pinching off the spent blooms.
M is for Mother’s Day and the many arrangements we’re making
Royer’s team members will create nearly 14,000 floral arrangements for Mother’s Day, most of them in our central design department in Lebanon. You can see some of that activity below.
