Culling - What is it & What Does it Mean for Flowers?

The definition of culling when referring to fresh cut flowers and plants is selecting and separating sellable or quality product from unsellable or undesirable product that should then be marked as shrink or waste and discarded. To keep displays looking fresh and full, culling flower displays should be done at least once daily or several times per day in a shop with higher sales volume.

Why is it important?

Culling helps with a number of issues most of us typically experience in a flower shop or floral department when it comes to maintaining displays. Through the course of the day, no matter if you are a full-service florist or have a self serve set-up, we all experience some if not all of the following which affect your bottom line:

Cause: Shopper takes flowers out of water and decides not to buy, doesn't put them back in the bucket correctly.
Effect: Flowers aren't staying hydrated, begin to wilt and/or dry out.

Cause: Shopper takes flowers out of water and drips water all over other flowers in display.
Effect: Flowers can begin to develop botrytis or mold.

Cause: Product that is date coded is past expiration.
Effect: Customer will purchase flowers with shorter vase life and have a negative experience.

Culling, The Daily "How To"

Making the culling of your displays part of your daily routine is just good for business. Once you're in the swing of things, you'll find the culling practice will take no more than a couple of minutes of your time but will make a huge, noticeable impact on your fresh presentation and bottom line immediately!

We recommend these steps for culling as many times daily as needed:

1. Approach display and remove any bunches with visible damage.
2. Check end of stems of any bunches that may have been left out of water. If dry remove from display, re-cut, and observe before returning to display.
3. Check sell-by or expiration dates if your product has them, remove any bunches out of date from display.
4. Consolidate product when possible rotating product forward. Do not overstuff buckets this can cause condensation leading to botrytis or mold.
5. Fill in back of display with fresh product to make display full. Be sure you are rotating product following the FIFO inventory rotation guidelines.

Questions? Get in touch with FloraLife! Our team of experts is ready to help!