If you expect or hope to receive an osculatory moment this Valentine’s Day, you should maybe get in touch with Farmhouse Florist and sooner than later. Travis Thompson, who owns the store with his wife Ashley, dropped by Carmi Kiwanis Thursday to discuss the store and just how things are going since the couple expanded from Grayville into Carmi just under 6 months ago. In addition to being the mayor of Grayville, a fire chief with Little Wabash Fire Protection District, baseball and basketball coach, and a father, Thompson also makes flower deliveries for the business. Ashley, a Highland, IL native, graduated from the University of Illinois with a degree in Ag Education.
She started at Grayville and then she was the very first employee at Ataraxia. She left that and went to Smithfield and then we decided that Grayville needed a flower shop. Rick Davis was retiring and we bought his building up there on the four way. I think we closed on it January 3 [2022] and I said we needed to be open February 1st.
Four weeks to open is a tall order. So how’d they do it?
We do all the work…my family and I and Ashley, we handled all the remodel. My brother’s an HVAC certified technician, so we built our own coolers…up there and we built our own cooler here in Carmi.
At the Carmi store’s grand opening in September, Ashley said they’d been blessed by the community and support in Grayville and that gave them the confidence to expand into Carmi after Gracie Mae’s announced it was closing its doors.
The couple call their store full service which means they offer fresh and silk flowers, custom orders, funeral work, everyday deliveries, formal flowers for dances/weddings, and even centerpieces for banquets. The store itself has an ample selection of gifts as well including candles, wind chimes, garden flags and much more. And things are going well.
From when we started and got down to Carmi, we’ve worked with WRUL in sponsoring ads on radio and their website. Michele asked me today if my expectations had been met and I think they’ve been exceeded. We still have room to grow though. We heard even this week that, ‘this is the first time I’ve ever been in here’ or ‘someone told us we need to come here to get flowers’. Probably the biggest compliment we get is how long our flowers last and from what I’ve been told, it’s because of the cooler system that we have.
In addition to the Thompsons, Farmhouse Florist employs a couple high school students, another part-timer, Joe Mitchell helps when he can, and they employ multiple delivery drivers. In preparation for Valentine’s Day, the store has brought in another three helpers creating a packed house.
Get those orders in and stay out of the doghouse. Find Farmhouse Florist on social media at https://www.facebook.com/FarmHouseFlorist21 or you can order from their website at https://www.farmhouseflorist.store/. You can also call 618-531-2816 though Thompson says you may have to leave a message and wait for someone to be able to get back to you due to high call volumes and the number of last-minute buyers.
