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Florist comparing different ways to buy wholesale flowers

How Much Time Are You Spending Buying Flowers?

By Zoe Abbott 10th August 2026

How Much Time Are You Spending Buying Flowers?

When you're working out the cost of buying flowers, it's easy to concentrate on the price of the flowers themselves. But there's another cost that's often overlooked: your time.

Whether you're visiting a wholesaler, ordering online or combining several different buying methods, every hour spent sourcing stock has a value to your business.

As part of our Fresh Thinking series, we're looking at just how much time different flower-buying methods can take over the course of a year.

Put a Value on Your Buying Time

For this exercise, we're using a buyer's wage of £12 per hour and a standard 40-hour working week.

If you spend just one hour every week buying flowers, that's 52 hours over the course of a year.

At £12 an hour, that's an annual buying cost of £624 — before you've even considered the cost of the flowers themselves.

Put another way, if you started counting those hours from 1 January, you'd spend more than an entire working week of the year simply buying stock.

Buying From a Traditional Wholesaler

For many florists, visiting a physical wholesaler has long been part of the working week. It gives you the opportunity to see stock in person, but the amount of time involved can vary considerably depending on the distance, journey time and how long you spend at the wholesaler.

If the entire process takes two hours each week, that's 104 hours a year. At £12 an hour, the annual cost of that time is £1,248.

At four hours a week, it increases to 208 hours and £2,496 a year.

And if travelling to, selecting and collecting flowers takes eight hours each week, that's 416 hours a year — with a time cost of £4,992.

2 Hours Per Week

104 hours per year
Annual time cost = £1,248

4 Hours Per Week

208 hours per year
Annual time cost = £2,496

8 Hours Per Week

416 hours per year
Annual time cost = £4,992

What About Buying Flowers Online?

Online buying changes the equation. Instead of travelling to a physical wholesaler, florists can compare and purchase stock without leaving the shop.

Online platforms can also provide access to stock from multiple suppliers in one place, giving florists greater choice without having to visit several different wholesalers.

1 Hour Per Week

52 hours per year
Annual time cost = £624

2 Hours Per Week

104 hours per year
Annual time cost = £1,248

What's Your Real Cost?

Of course, not every florist buys flowers in exactly the same way. You might visit a wholesaler for some stock, order other lines online and use different suppliers during particularly busy periods.

The important thing is to work out how much time you actually spend buying.

Take the number of hours you spend sourcing and purchasing flowers each week, multiply it across the year and then apply an hourly cost to that time.

The result might surprise you.

Buying Smarter Isn't Just About Stem Price

As we explored when looking at annual overspend, comparing stem prices can reveal substantial differences between suppliers. But price is only one part of the calculation.

Travel, availability, delivery charges and, importantly, the time you spend buying all contribute to the real cost of getting flowers into your shop.

So next time you compare suppliers, don't just ask what the flowers cost. Ask what buying them is costing your business in time too.

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