Lori Beasley takes a day off from her full-time job to allow herself enough time to make orders. She uses the time to prepare dozens of hand-dipped, chocolate-covered strawberries for customers of her home bakery, Busy Bee Bakery in Fort McCoy, Florida.
Like Beasley, small dessert business owners across north-central Florida have found themselves busy in the days leading up to Saturday. For these home bakers, Valentine’s Day isn’t just a holiday. It’s one of the most important days of the year for their businesses.
Instead of relaxing with loved ones, they will spend their Valentine’s Day putting final touches on their strawberries and driving their packed cars around Alachua and Marion counties to deliver them.
“It’s really big,” Beasley said. “I get a lot of orders during Valentine’s Day.”
Beasley said she goes through many strawberries to fill about 30 orders, staying up through the night and occasionally recruiting a friend to help. If the strawberries aren’t perfect, she doesn’t use them.
“I want them to be good. If my name’s going to be on it, I want it to be yummy,” Beasley said.
Monica Brook, a program assistant in the University of Florida’s Department of Psychiatry, also started her bakery, Monica’s Decadent Desserts, out of her home. She said she hopes to open a shop when she retires and turn it into her full-time career.
Brook’s best memory of her business was when a friend ordered strawberries and asked her to sing while delivering them to her friend’s husband. Brook dressed up as a heart-shaped chocolate box to fulfill the request.
“I love to make people happy, and I love making treats for people,” Brook said. “It brightens up somebody’s day sometimes.”
Kylie Burkhamer, a fourth-year nursing student at UF, started the business Sweets by Kylie a few months ago. She said she had previously made treats for her friends and family to enjoy but started her business to help pay for things she needed for school and as a creative outlet.
Burkhamer said she has six orders but had to stop taking them before her pre-order deadline earlier this week to ensure she had enough time to get all her supplies and balance the workload with being a college student.
The most important component of the Valentine’s Day novelty is the strawberries, and it takes time to pick the right ones to use.
“I look for a really good shaped strawberry that almost got that really pretty leaf at the end,” Brook said. “For Valentine’s Day, you want that strawberry to look kind of like a heart, and it’s got to be really pretty red.”
Some bakers choose to browse the selection of companies offered by grocery retailers, including Publix and Sam’s Club. Beasley said she gets her strawberries by the flat from Harbison Farm in Anthony, Florida, which sources them from Plant City, Florida.
According to the Florida Strawberry Growers Association, Plant City has the nickname of “The Winter Strawberry Capital of the World,” and is the second largest producer of strawberries in the U.S.
To keep up with the rising costs of strawberries and chocolate, Beasley and Brook have raised their prices over the years.
Beasley said she had received about 30 pre-orders for this Valentine’s Day and sells her chocolate-covered strawberries for $25 per dozen. Two years ago, she was able to price them at $20. Brook has between 15 and 20 orders and sells a dozen for $30.
"Things are a lot more expensive than I would have assumed when I decided to start selling them,” Burkhamer said.
The price for Publix’s chocolate-covered strawberries ranges from $6.99 to $24.99. A gourmet competitor for local small business owners is gift retailer Shari’s Berries, owned by 1-800-Flowers.com. The company delivers nationwide, and its prices start at $39.99 for six chocolate-covered strawberries.
Buying chocolate-covered strawberries from a small business instead of big-box retailers means there are more options for customization. Beasley said she recently got a holographic chocolate mold from her son and is excited to use it for her strawberries this year.
“You can’t get what I do in the store,” Beasley said.
Chocolate-covered strawberries aren’t the only thing local small bakery businesses sell for Valentine’s Day; they also offer cake pops, cakes, cupcakes and cookies, but chocolate-covered strawberries remain the most popular.
“There’s just something sexy about a chocolate-covered strawberry,” Brook said.
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