Delivery routes for flower shops: save hours and miles every day

Home delivery is a flower shop’s most valued service — and its most invisible cost. Flowers arriving on the birthday, on the anniversary, at just the right moment: that’s what the customer remembers. What nobody sees is what’s behind it: extra miles, second trips because something was left in the shop and florist hours spent being a driver. In this guide we explain how to plan your flower shop’s delivery routes to save time and fuel every day, methodically, whether you deliver yourself or have a driver.

How much an improvised delivery run costs

Do the maths for any afternoon with twelve deliveries. The difference between heading out “to see how it goes” and heading out with the route in order is bigger than it looks:

	Improvised route	Planned route
Deliveries	12	12
Order of stops	Whatever comes up	Optimised before setting off
Trips back to the shop	1–2 (“I forgot the one for X street”)	0
Repeated trips across town	Several	The minimum
Typical result	3.5–4 hours	2–2.5 hours

The exact numbers depend on your city, but the pattern is universal: an unordered route uses 30 to 40% more time and miles. And there’s a worse cost than fuel: if you’re the one delivering, every hour behind the wheel is an hour not making bouquets, not serving at the counter and not closing orders. The owner’s hour is the most expensive one in the business.

Step 1: group by time slot and by area

Planning starts when you take the order, not when you set off to deliver:

• Sell time slots, not times. “Between 10 and 1” lets you build an efficient route; “at 11:20” makes you a slave to the clock. Save exact times for what really needs them (a funeral, a restaurant).
• Group by area. Divide your area by postcode or neighbourhood. When an order comes in for an area you’re already going to tomorrow, the extra delivery costs you almost nothing.
• Decide your cut-offs. For example: anything ordered before 12 can go out on the afternoon run; anything after goes tomorrow. Announcing it stops you promising the impossible.

Step 2: order the stops before you set off

The route is decided calmly at the counter, not in the car with the indicator on. Ordering the stops on the map —grouping by proximity and respecting time slots— takes five minutes and saves an hour.

Google Maps can help up to a point: it accepts a few stops and doesn’t optimise the order for you — you have to work out the order yourself, stop by stop. With 4–5 deliveries it’s manageable; with 12 across three time slots, it isn’t. That’s where software with route optimisation for flower shops makes the difference: you give it the day’s deliveries and it gives you back the ordered route, in one or several runs.

Step 3: give the driver everything they need

Every stop on the route should come with:

• A full, verified address — 80% of delivery problems are incomplete addresses: no floor, no flat letter, a street name “heard over the phone”.
• The recipient’s phone number — for logistics: “I’m downstairs”, “can you buzz me in?”.
• The notes that save deliveries — “blue front door”, “ring 3B, it’s her mum”, “leave at the hairdresser’s next door if she’s out”.
• The collection time at the shop — if there are several runs a day, the driver needs to know when each batch will be ready, without calls back and forth.

Step 4: confirm every delivery

The question asked most often on a flower shop’s WhatsApp is “has it arrived yet?”. Without delivery confirmations, the only answer is to call the driver — who’s driving.

The professional standard is for every delivery to be confirmed on the spot: marked as delivered, ideally with a photo (the bouquet at the door, in the recipient’s hands) and a note if something went wrong (“not home, left with the neighbour on the 2nd floor”). That way you answer the customer in seconds, with proof, and any later complaint is resolved by looking at the record.

Step 5: charge for delivery like a professional

Delivery has real costs (time, vehicle, fuel) and should have a price:

• Fees by area: local delivery at one price, the wider metro area at another. Defining it by postcode ends the arguments.
• Free above a certain amount, if that works as a promotion for you — but as your decision, not as a habit that crept in on its own.
• Always charge it with the order, not as a surprise afterwards.

If you’ve never charged for it, starting is easier than you think: flower shop customers don’t buy on delivery price, they buy because the flowers arrive well and on time.

What Evoflor does for you

All of the above can be done by hand — and if you deliver without a method today, start there. What Evoflor’s delivery module does is automate it: the day’s deliveries are grouped by time slot, the route is calculated and optimised (in one, two or three runs), the driver has an app with the order, the notes and the phone numbers, confirms every delivery with a photo, and you see it all in real time from the shop. Zones and fees by postcode are set up once and applied automatically. In the user guide you can see the real step by step.

Frequently asked questions

Is Google Maps enough? For 4–5 occasional deliveries, yes. For daily delivery with time slots, no: you have to order the stops yourself, copy addresses by hand, and there’s no record of what was delivered or when. The jump to optimised routes shows from day one.

I deliver myself — is this for me? Even more so: when the owner delivers, every minute of a badly planned route comes out of making bouquets and selling. Planning the run in five minutes and carrying the order on your phone is the most profitable improvement of your week.

Do I notify the customer or the recipient about the delivery? The person who bought from you, always: “your order is out for delivery”, “delivered at 12:40”. The recipient only gets the logistics, with no details — if it’s a surprise, no product and no sender. Good software keeps the two messages separate so there are no mishaps.