How Do I Control My Flower Shop COGS?

Like Payroll, COGS represents a large risk to the profitability of your flower shop. Our COGS scoring is usually a little further behind our payroll as we wait for invouces and statements to come in from our vendors but we are continually loking for ways to increase this reaction time. The faster we create the information that faster we can correct issues. Just like our payroll scoring we analyze this score beyond a simple one size fits all calculation.

If you're working off of the blanket  method and your payroll comes to 35% you might make a kneejerk reaction to reduce the hours of one of you delivery drivers. What if your delivery department is already understaffed? What if you have too many in sales on the phones? You don't have the information to make an informed decision!

We break each score into two categories:

1. Perishable (Consists of fresh flowers, edibles (gourmet), and plants)

2. Non-Perishable (Hard Goods and wire containers, independently)

You can not score your COGS on one line item. You may get a large vase shipment in one week or you may be overbuying your flowers. You don't know unless you separate the scores! Remember, there are two ways to ruin your scores! Most stores revert to paying too much for flowers but the issue could be that you are underpricing your flowers or overstuffing your arrangements!

We are highly focused on the perishable score, mainly the fresh flowers as the shelf life is much shorter than our edibles and plants. Hard goods is not as sensitive for us but we do not want to build up excess inventory or incorrectly price the items so it is neccesary to score it. 

We've included our YTD COGS scoring below as a free download. If it doesn't make sense just click on the red button for customized help!