IN 2010, when Farmgirl Flowers founder Christina Stembel was working as director of alumni relations and campaign outreach at Stanford Law School, she would pay $140 to send a bouquet of flowers to her mom back home in Indiana. When her mom sent her a photo of the arrangement, “it looked like I spent $9.99 at Safeway,” Stembel says. A natural problem solver, she began to wonder: “Can’t we figure out a solution that offers designer quality at a reasonable price with a better experience?”
To that end, Stembel started Farmgirl in 2010 out of her Bay Area apartment. Now shipping nationwide via its website, with brick-and-mortar outposts in San Francisco, Los Angeles and, soon, New York City, the company is a leading floral delivery service that sources only American plants and is challenging establishments like 1-800-Flowers. Farmgirl’s model is simple: one arrangement of seasonal, domestic plants offered daily. The bouquets, which start at $38, are artfully imperfect and wrapped in biodegradable burlap from coffee sacks donated by local roasters, including Sightglass and Peet’s Coffee & Tea. Stembel, 37, expects Farmgirl to reach $4.5 million in sales, a growth of over 200 percent, this year.
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