No shrinking violet

Art Culinaire, Spring, 2005

ANDREW VOGEL WANTS TO MAKE ONE THING CLEAR: "I'M NOT A flower person." Vogel's tone is pejorative, his denial sounding almost Nixon-esque. "This is a business, these are flowers," he adds. "That's how I look at it. I don't even give my wife anything but tulips, and then it's only if I have any left over from the day."

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Vogel is the sole proprietor and only full-time employee of Plant-a-Mime, a floral design company that provides decorative-but-hardy arrangements for a group of French and Mediterranean restaurants in New York, including Marseilles, French Roast, L'Express, Le Monde and Nice Matin. He also services some corporate clients, like a series of midtown monoliths that house the National Hockey League, the Bank of Tokyo and Avon. When he's not picking up supplies in Manhattan's wholesale flower district or installing arrangements in his clients' dining rooms, he works out of his home in Oceanside, NY.

"I'm in business twenty-six years without a store," he says. "I don't need a store to survive, and without that overhead, I can do better and more for the client." Among Vogel's first clients was Morgan Stanley, "way back in 1978, before they had matching furniture." He was fresh out of college, and was volunteering at a dental clinic and working an assortment of odd jobs, one of which was watering Morgan Stanley's plants. A secretary offered to fire the florist and hire Vogel if he could do a better job. After a few weeks of buying arrangements from a local shop and selling them to the fledgling investment firm at a thirty-three percent markup, the would-be dentist invested in some equipment, learned the basics of arranging, and never looked back.

"I'd like to retire," he quips, "but I have two kids who like to go to sleepaway camp, and take vacations, and wear Juicy Couture."

Vogel has agreed to meet me in Manhattan's flower market district, an area surrounding West 28th Street that houses about seventy businesses selling flowers and related goods and services, and that has lately succumbed to encroaching real estate development and rising rents in the area. For two years, The Flower Market Association of New York City has been investigating the flourishing Meatpacking District, about 15 blocks south, as a possible new home for the market's vendors. The plan, called "Meat Market Blooms", is currently under review by state and city bureaucracies, but if all goes well, the market could head south as soon as Fall 2005. In the meantime, it's business as usual in this particularly fragrant area of the city.

It's a Thursday, one of Vogel's busiest days, in which he'll spend an hour or so picking up pre-ordered flowers and other 'green material', and another 12 to 14 driving from dining room to dining room, installing 28 more or less identical arrangements. He's running late, as a parade down Fifth Avenue has put traffic in the area at a virtual standstill. I wait outside a storefront belonging to Harry Vlacho, a flower wholesaler who supplies Vogel with the bulk of his product, and who allows Vogel to park his van inside his garage-like shop. "We have a mutual agreement," he'll later say, not elaborating further. As I wait, I watch a remarkable cross-section of New Yorkers dart in and out of the wholesale electronics, plant and apparel shops that line the street. Vogel has told me that, officially, the wholesalers are not open to the general public, but I've also heard that customers with cash generally do not have a problem getting what they need. I inadvertently test this theory when, fearing that my tape recorder might fail in the course of the interview, I dart down the street to a toy wholesaler and score a box of forty double A batteries for a mere $7.

It's 11 am, the end of the day for most flower vendors, whose first customers come to pick up flowers as early as 5 am. Vogel likes to come later in the morning, to avoid rush hour traffic into Manhattan and, I suspect, to avoid the "flower people." The flower market has given rise to a lively social scene, at least for the early rising crowd.

At 11:30 am, a shiny blue van pulls up and idles in front of Vlacho's. The mechanized garage door begins to creak open, and one of Vlacho's employees runs out into the street, holding up traffic while the van's driver makes a three-point turn and backs into the open storefront. A tall, slim man in his early 50's, dressed in neatly pressed jeans and a crisp plaid shirt, emerges from the driver's seat. He's smiling, and he starts talking immediately.

"You see what I have to deal with? You think it's easy?" Not waiting for a response, he steps aside to quietly settle some business with Vlacho, an elderly gentleman whose slow movements stand in sharp contrast to the constant, frenetic activity of the three employees moving back and forth across the shop. I run to catch up with the man I assume is Andrew Vogel as he heads out of Vlacho's store, down the block to another wholesaler that specializes in branches and greenery. Vogel quickly introduces himself and explains that we're going to pick up his orders, which include five bales of curly willow branches. They'll be used as a background element in all the arrangements he'll make today. Almost immediately, there's trouble--someone has sold three of the five bales that were to be set aside for Vogel.