Are We Reaching the Next Generation of Flower Buyers? A Candid Interview with Millennial & Gen Z Guys
How do you market flowers to a generation that thinks of the grocery store first — if they think of flowers at all? Following up on last week's conversation with Eddie from Barstool Sports, Lori gets a rare focus group most florists would pay for: her own sons. Davis, a millennial who works in sales and marketing for Market Garden Brewery in Cleveland, and Reece, a Gen Z server at Fleming's Steakhouse in The Woodlands, sit down with their "hip young podcasting mom" and answer the question the industry keeps asking — are we actually reaching the next generation of flower buyers?
Where young men start: Google and the grocery store
Davis's flower history is short: one funeral arrangement (organized by a girl in the group), prom corsages, and grocery-store bouquets for a past girlfriend. His honest starting point — "flowers are flowers," and the ones next to the donuts seemed the same as any others until his mom's career educated him otherwise. Reece, who grew up with Lori already in the industry, has actually called a local shop to send flowers and is noticeably more confident about the process. The gap between the two brothers makes the point on its own: exposure and education, not age, determine whether someone becomes a flower buyer. And Davis confirms the study Lori cites — millennials don't think about flowers unprompted. They need reminders and reasons; for most guys, he admits, the motivation is a girlfriend and a looming Valentine's Day.
Build a "guy section" on your website
Davis's marketing idea is the one shop owners should take seriously. Flower shop websites, he says, look "very flowery and feminine" — yet at Valentine's Day, most buyers are men shopping for women. His pitch: lean into it. Add a button that says "Are you a guy? Click this," leading to a short questionnaire — her favorite color, her favorite flower, where it's going, your budget — that hands the shop's designers what they need to impress her. "Guys do not like not knowing," he explains; the winning message is we know you don't know what you're doing — let us help you. Lori connects it to the old Nike custom-shoe builder: even four simple questions would make an intimidated buyer feel like the site was built for him.
Meet Gen Z where they scroll
Reece's blunt platform check: Facebook "isn't really where it's at" for his generation — it's Instagram, Snapchat, YouTube, and TikTok. His killer content idea is flower-arranging ASMR: satisfying videos of stems being trimmed and designs coming together. Davis adds that a funny Valentine's video aimed at clueless guys could travel fast, and Lori reminds shops of the TikTok truth: it only takes one video to go viral.
Experiences and customization beat the base package
Lori floats a build-your-own bouquet bar — a Chipotle-style experience where a customer creates the arrangement, finished in a vase with add-ons. Both sons would pay for it, with Davis adding a sharp nuance: the wow factor lands hardest when the giver does the work ("I did this for you"), not when the recipient assembles her own gift. On customization, both agree with what Eddie said a week earlier: nobody wants the same popular arrangement everyone else got. Being able to say "this bouquet is the only one like it in the world" is the appeal — which is exactly why Davis was drawn to the designer's-choice option he spotted on a shop website: "let the creative people be creative."
The grandma story: why flowers are worth it
The episode's heart is Lori's answer to Davis's old objection that flowers are a waste of money that "just dies in a week." She tells the story of sending flowers to her mom — his grandma — who lit up, called every single day to say how beautiful they were, and tried to dry them rather than throw them away. Davis gets it now: the flowers fade, but the emotion outlasts them. "It's not just the flower, it's what the symbol behind it is." Lori still keeps the card from the first flowers her husband sent her in 1990. That's the message the industry needs to hand this generation: flowers are others-centered, usually a surprise, rarely something we buy ourselves — and everybody deserves to feel that special at least once.
Key takeaways
- Young men default to Google and the grocery store — education and exposure, not age, create flower buyers.
- Add a guy-friendly path to your website: a short questionnaire that says "we know you don't know — let us help."
- Market to Gen Z on Instagram, Snapchat, YouTube, and TikTok — try arranging ASMR and humor aimed at clueless buyers.
- Sell customization and uniqueness: designer's choice framed as "one of a kind" beats the popular base package.
- Sell the emotion, not the stems — the feeling of receiving flowers outlives the flowers themselves.