The cool, quiet flower shop at the corner of West Kennewick Avenue and South Fruitland Street has been around for more than half a century.

Kennewick Flower Shop originally opened on Cascade Street, where current owner Jennie Oldham’s grandmother, Betty, first started the business in 1969. Oldham’s grandfather built the new shop at 604 W. Kennewick Ave. in 1973, and there the shop has stayed.

This is the shop’s 55th year in business.

Inside, the flower shop is cozy, with an array of plants on one end and a small coffee shop with tables and chairs at the other. Plushies and gift items are displayed on freestanding shelves, and gauzy curtains frame the windows.

And, of course, there are the flowers.

Family business

The shop is a family affair. Oldham currently employs one full-time worker, but a variety of relatives help with the work as needed. 

“On our busier times on the holidays, my aunt is here designing, my parents are here delivering, my sister comes and delivers, my cousins come and deliver,” Oldham said. “…They’re all willing to come and help out.”

Oldham’s mother and 90-year-old grandfather often run deliveries together. “He loves something to do,” she said. 

When her own children were in high school, they would come to the shop during lunch.

It was Oldham’s oldest daughter, who is disabled, who prompted her to leave pharmaceutical work to come to the flower shop 17 years ago.

Unlike in a corporate setting, she could take her daughter to work or trust another employee to take care of things if she needed to leave. 

In a similar way, the flower shop is there for the community’s most important events, providing flowers for both the highs and lows of customers’ lives.

“Flowers are part of all life events,” Oldham said. “Flowers before new babies, and birthdays, and get wells, and then you have your anniversaries, and your weddings, and your funerals.”

The shop faces a lull once school gets out for the summer and people start traveling. 

“You’re rolling more heavy through your Valentine’s and Mother’s Day and graduation and Father’s Day,” Oldham said. “And then summer hits and you kind of drop.”

Despite the slower time, a lot of weddings take place throughout the summer, and birthday and funeral flowers are needed yearlong. Oldham said it’s just about “managing how much product you bring in and adjusting what you do.”

Coffee and community

In addition to flowers, the Kennewick Flower Shop supplies plants, plushies and balloons, and fruit and charcuterie gift baskets. The team also helps put together auction baskets with various themes. 

Another unique part of the store is the coffee shop, run by the Kennewick Flower Shop team. It’s been a part of the store for at least 15 years. 

It has a different pace than other coffee shops in the area. 

“We’re quiet,” Oldham said, “but I get a lot of businesspeople that will come in and have little meetings, or, you know, one-to-ones, or just a quiet place to sit and use the Wi-Fi.” 

She described the business as “more of just that relaxation place that you can come in and sit down.” It features fair trade, organic coffee as well as a drive-thru. 

Earlier this year, the building that houses both the coffee shop and flower shop was hit by a car. The damage was repairable, but since one side of the building needed to be repainted, “we took advantage of just doing it all at once,” Oldham said.

The new coat of paint gives the 50-year-old building a fresh look. 

While the store has regular and longtime customers, Oldham has noticed that, “with the growth and development of our community growing so fast, there’s so many new people that have no idea that we’ve been here this long.”

As the community has grown and changed, the way people shop also has changed, Oldham said.

A lot is online now, including Kennewick Flower Shop’s flower sales. Customers can order flowers from anywhere through the shop’s website, though the delivery area is limited to Kennewick, Pasco, Richland, Burbank and Benton City. 

Personalized service

For Oldham, “keeping things local” has been an important part of the store. 

As a local business, Kennewick Flower Shop offers services that aren’t available to those buying flowers elsewhere, like grocery stores. One of Oldham’s favorite parts of her work is the way she is able to customize.

Some customers come in with a broad idea or no idea at all, and the florists can talk them through possible options. Others come in with a more concrete idea that the florists can build on.

“I like putting together something somebody has an inspiration about or that we can create for them,” Oldham said. “… A lot of times it’s with funeral flowers and kind of just adding that personal touch.”

Oldham recalled a time when a customer asked for the Amtrak logo in flowers. They used foam to create the shape of three stripes, then filled them in with flowers. 

That request had been for a man who had operated an Amtrak line; Oldham remembered that they had had a ticket for each stop along his route. 

A unique arrangement like that “tells a story about the person,” Oldham said. “…when somebody looks at the arrangement, it means something. You see them in it.”

“That’s what you get when you come to your local florist,” she said.

Kennewick Flower Shop: 604 W. Kennewick Ave., kennewickflowershop.net, 509-582-5123.