Petal pushers: Demand for flowers in Las Vegas keeps blooming

Thursday, July 12, 2001 | 8:51 a.m.

Walking through an enormous refrigerator, Bruce Greenfield stops and lifts a giant purple allium from a flashy assortment sitting in white buckets along a wall.

"This is a very high-end type of flower," Greenfield said, as he slowly turned its hefty stalk.

Like the tens of thousands of flowers chilling in the cooler at Mellano & Company, a local flower wholesaler, the hibernating blossom will likely be part of an enthusiastic floral display at a Strip hotel, be it in a grand lobby, in a high-roller suite or at an extravagant gala.

It may even make Las Vegas' queen mother of floral arrangements: Bellagio's conservatory.

Mellano & Company, one of a handful of wholesale florists that supply flowers to local hotels and mega-resorts, receives shipments of flowers five days a week from all over the world.

"On a Thursday we'll probably fill 500 to 800 buckets (with flowers)," Greenfield, manager of Mellano & Company, said.

And at any given time the business's 6,000-square-foot refrigerator may be richly stocked with elegant French tulips, full Fuji mums, exotic protea and out-of-season lilies of the valley, all waiting for their number to be called from among nearly 20,000 roses and 40,000 stems of carnations. In a town brimming with conventioneers, gamblers and tourists who stroll lobbies and attend galas, fresh flowers are considered essential for making an impression.

And hotels will spend a hearty amount to have the finest fresh flowers on display.

"It's for the aesthetic appeal," said Tina Garcia, floral manager for MGM Grand, who orders flowers from Mellano & Company and the local Santa Barbara Farms, Inc. "It brings color and freshness to an area.

"We do hundreds of centerpieces for conventions. We do pool floats -- huge floating floral arrangements, arrangements in VIP lounges ... it could be a small arrangement to something big and elaborate."

MGM Grand spent $1.4 million on cut flowers last year. At the Bellagio a little more than $6 million is spent annually to fill its conservatory, lobbies, wedding chapels, restaurants and high-roller suites.

"We take (Bellagio) over a couple of truckloads a day," said Gina Fletcher, buyer for local wholesaler Santa Barbara Farms, Inc. "Sometimes we go over three to four times a day.

"(Hotels) are very particular because they only want the best."

Rich blossoms

At Bellagio's Picasso restaurant, high-end fresh-cut flowers are provided each day for miniature table arrangements. For this, orchids, Asiatic lilies, hydrangeas, roses and calla lilies, among others, may be used, Jim Gibbons, director of horticulture at Bellagio, said.

More than 300 different flower varieties are used for more than 200 centerpieces per day at Mirage, Treasure Island, Golden Nugget, Bellagio and New York-New York.

"That can be two to three flowers in a vase to thousands of flowers in a vase," Gibbons said.

Inside Bellagio's conservatory, the floral theme is changed according to each of the four seasons, and throughout each season the color of the flowers are changed to match the growth of the season. For example, Gibbons said, "Spring starts very light, then finishes up somewhat dark," Gibbons said.

Conventions, weddings and private events also require a lot of cut flowers. The Las Vegas Convention and Visitors Authority reports that Las Vegas hosted 3,722 conventions in 2000.

Because of this, "The distribution in Las Vegas is different from any city in the country," said Lee Murphy, president and CEO of the California Cut Flower Commission.

Even compared to such cities as New York, where there are a lot of big events, "Las Vegas has still got 'em beat," Murphy said.

And while it's common for florists to travel to other cities to keep up with industry trends, "So many (florists in the industry) come to our city and look at the hotels because it's the biggest and the best and money's not an object," Fletcher, of Santa Barbara Farms, Inc., said.

Pretty petals

Not only do flowers decorate an area or simply look pretty on their own, "Flowers grab attention, get people in a euphoric right-brain mode that they associate with that commercial moment," said Phillip Toroian, floral manager for a local event group, Beyond Designs, who adds that flowers are an integral part of conventions.

Toroian is in charge of ordering flowers and arranging centerpieces at events. Although the perishable nature of elaborately designed floral arrangements lends to a short life span for displays, "it leaves a lasting impression," Toroian said.

"Flowers add something that no other element can," said Nancy Murphy, director of sales for the Las Vegas Convention and Vistors Authority. "They show that the event organizer has gone the extra few miles."

But fulfilling the demands for the events isn't always that easy.

Even though wholesalers keep a plentiful assortment of backup inventory, quite often someone is on the phone trying to hunt down a flower that is out of season in most areas of the world, or part of a last-minute order.

"This town is last-minute," Greenfield said. "Everything is last-minute. Conventions come to town, dinners are planned, then ... someone says, 'Let's do flowers.'

"That's the way it is. But it's exciting. It really is. To be able to pull it off, to find the product, that's the exciting part. The hardest thing we run into is when (people) want a flower that's out of season."

He recently received a request for 20 bunches of white French tulips that were needed in two days for a private party. The tulips are out of season, but he was able to find someone who was growing an "iceberg crop" in Northern California.

Other recent requests include an order for five stems of out-of-season lilies of the valley and a last-minute request for 800-1,000 mini calla lilies of a particular rust color that needed to be ordered from Holland.

Fletcher said she also enjoys "the hunt" for unusual flower requests that Las Vegas spurs.

She's been in the industry for 15 years, working in California and Illinois before moving to Las Vegas, a city where the floral industry is "crazy" and "always busy."

"Other retailers in other cities, they slow down in the summer," Fletcher said. "We don't have a quiet time.

At Mellano & Company, crates are stacked with flowers that have been separated and marked: Carnations for MGM Grand's room service; and orchids and other showy stems marked "Bellagio VIP" and "Mirage entries."

The flowers have traveled far and wide to be in Las Vegas. They've come from Holland, New Zealand, Australia, South America, South Africa and Thailand and from backyard greenhouses in California and small crops in Idaho and Utah.

"The Wynns, they love flowers everywhere," Greenfield said. "Each time he (Steve Wynn) moved to a new hotel, it got bigger floral-wise.

"That's why Steve Wynn sets it apart from anyone else, because he's willing to budget (fresh flowers) in."

Keeping fresh

Once ordered, cut flowers are delivered in a chain of cooled environments at each stop to preserve their freshness. The arriving flowers are placed in water that is treated with food and chemicals, then placed in the 30-35 degree temperatures of the warehouse refrigerator.

"Climate is everything," Greenfield said. "The warmer the flowers are, the quicker the flowers mature and bloom out.

"It would be great if it were nuts and bolts because I could have it on a shelf and it would sit there forever."

If a convention planner calls requesting opened lilies, but Greenfield has only closed ones that would take one or two days to open, the company will take the flowers from the refrigerator, baby them with warm water and warm temperatures until they blossom, then put them back in the cooler where they will remain open for the convention.

At MGM MIRAGE properties, every public floral arrangement is visited every day to make sure something doesn't look bad or hasn't died.

In the Bellagio conservatory, flowers are changed out twice weekly and each day new flowers are plugged in to keep up with the arrangement. At Bellagio, employees work seven days a week, two shifts a day to handle the load, Gibbons said.

But when it comes to pleasing the customers, all the effort for the fresh flowers is worth their while, Gibbons said.

In the end, "It says, 'We care enough to show you the best.' "

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