Holiday flower power: How Royer's grew to be a major Central PA florist over 85 years

Royer's Flowers and Gifts, which has served Lebanon County and surrounding areas for the last 85 years, prepares for its second busiest time of the year with its own version of "Santa's Workshop."

Throughout York, Berks, Franklin, Dauphin, Lebanon, Lancaster and Cumberland counties, Royer's operates 15 stores in Pennsylvania and partners with its sister company, Stephenson's Flowers & and Gifts, which has one store in Harrisburg.

But its corporate headquarters in Lebanon, at the site of the original Royer's family home where the family would grow and sell plants during the Great Depression, is where all the holiday magic happens.

Starting in early November, Royer's begins work on crafting its holiday arrangements of log boxes, boxwood trees and locally grown poinsettias. These arrangements are sold until Christmas, and as long as they're properly watered, they last through the holiday season.

According to Vice President of Central Operation Geoff Royer, the few weeks leading up to Christmas is comparable to the week and half leading up to Valentine's day.

"We'll probably do 20,000 to 21,000 arrangements and plants and everything for Christmas," he said. "And at Valentine's Day, we do about that same amount, it's just compressed into a week and a half."

To help deal with the increased business, Royer's employs extra seasonal workers who put together arrangements by hand in their back rooms temporarily deemed Santa's Workshop.

Geoff Royer said that through the years, many of those seasonal jobs have turned into long-term careers at Royer's.

CEO of Royer's, Tom Royer, briefly reminisced on 85 years of the business and how it has managed to stay successful.

He said that before the 1970s, Royer's mostly grew all of their own flowers in their greenhouses, but because of rising heating costs, a result of the oil crisis, they began importing nearly all of their product from growers in South America and Europe.

They shifted their focus to retail, opening locations throughout central Pennsylvania, many of them previously being gas stations because of their locations.

Because of their expertise in growing flowers, Royer's was able to work with the oversees growers and understand the logistics of transporting flowers efficiently, safely and most cost effectively.

"Actually, our flowers last longer now than they did when we grew them ourselves," Royer said. "That's because the innovation of better, stronger varieties of flowers. They developed post harvest treatments so that once you cut the flower you put it in a solution and that makes it last longer."

"And now the supply chain from when it's cut in a farm from South America till we get it, you're talking about six days. It moves that quick."

Once at Royer's, they continue to use their expertise to care for the flowers, ensuring their costumers are getting the best quality product, adding to their reputation as having long-lasting arrangements.

During the pandemic, Royer said, the business had done so well that they had pulled back on some of their marketing endeavors.

Because people weren't able to see each other in person for so long, sending flowers to family members and friends through the mail or delivering them to someone's front step was more popular than ever.

"We were the benefactor. It was nothing that I did, it was the whole industry," he said. "Our whole industry went bonkers for two years because we were one of the few industries that could do what we do."

He said that 2021 and 2022 were the best two years in the company's history, up 20 to 25 percent compared to 2019.

Since then, numbers have started to trend towards those pre-pandemic levels, but are still up about 16% compared to then.

"That's OK," he said, "because we were basically sprinting for two years."

Daniel Larlham Jr. is a reporter for the Lebanon Daily News. Reach him at DLarlham@LDNews.com or on Twitter @djlarlham

This article originally appeared on Lebanon Daily News: How Royer's grew to become a major Central PA florist over 85 years