Building customer relationships starts with excellent customer service, which is the number one priority of every Hy-Vee employee. “A helpful smile in every aisle” is our brand, most especially in the floral shop. As florists, we touch every life-event that our customers experience, from the beginning of life to the end and everything in between. Flowers can say it all, so it is extremely important that we get it right every time for our customers.

Back in the 1970s, I was driving along a freeway near Columbus, OH, in midwinter. The highway was covered with several inches of snow and the pavement under the snow was icy, so it was good to see a salt truck and snowplow working ahead of me on the road.

Main Street Produce Inc. in Santa Maria, CA, which undertook a significant expansion in its strawberry acreage in 2012, has bumped up its anticipated production again for 2013, with about a 20 percent increase in acreage as well as a shift in varieties, according to President Paul Allen.

The Easter holiday will be a time of good potato movement for Florida Fresh Potato Growers Inc. “March will probably be the heaviest shipping season,” said Ken Wiles, vice president of sales with cooperative member Mack Farms Inc. “I would say movement overall is fairly brisk.”

Memorial Day is getting renewed attention as an occasion for remembrance of deceased veterans through the Memorial Day Flowers Program, operated by a new nonprofit foundation. The program had a “soft opening” on Memorial Day 2012 and is expanding this year.

The project builds community ties between supermarket floral departments and other floral retailers and local groups such as Veterans of Foreign Wars. They work together on Memorial Day ceremonies to encourage relatives and volunteers to lay roses on tombstones and to take roses home in memory of the veterans.

Women’s Day on March 8 seemed to industry veterans to be growing as a floral holiday. “The mass market is starting to make it a promotional opportunity,” said Lane DeVries, president and chief executive officer of Sun Valley Group in Arcata, CA. He had proposed the industry make it a floral holiday in a guest column in The Produce News in January 2012.