Florists sell on owner-normalized earnings — once we charge a market wage for the designer you, the real number shows up. Here's how buyers price walk-in, event, and wire-service revenue.
Enter two numbers for an instant Florists & Flower Shops ballpark. No signup — the real number comes from your books.
We answer each one from your books first — so you fix the story before a diligence team writes the number.
Most flower shops ARE the owner — you're the lead designer, the flower buyer, and the dispatcher. A buyer reads that as the business walking out the door at close. Until a lead designer and buyer are demonstrably in place, expect the offer to sit at the bottom of the SDE band, after a market floral-designer wage (~$36K, BLS SOC 27-1023) is charged against your owner benefit.
Wire services (FTD, Teleflora, 1-800-Flowers/BloomNet) keep ~20-27% of an incoming order's value, so a wire-heavy book earns far less per revenue dollar than direct full-margin orders. A buyer pulls the wire-service split out, values it net not gross, and prices a walk-in-only, wire-dependent shop toward the floor.
Stems are perishable and must turn within days — daily spoilage and shrink come straight off margin, and a sloppy buying/FIFO discipline is a recurring leak a buyer will model. Tight buying, pre-booked event stems, and a measured shrink rate defend the multiple.
Valentine's Day and Mother's Day together are roughly 40% of annual revenue. A buyer strikes off TTM, never a peak month, and underwrites what an ordinary month earns. A shop whose economics only work on two holidays carries seasonality risk a buyer prices for.
The walk-in cooler and the delivery van are the shop's real capital — a failing cooler compressor ruins inventory overnight, and a dated van/POS is deferred capex. A buyer wants the age and condition of the cooler, fleet, and POS, or they model a refresh into the price.
Each lever is sized for a representative owner-normalized ebitda for a ~$500k-revenue owner-run shop at ~10% ebitda after the designer add-back; sde basis runs higher by the add-back — about $110K EBITDA. Same number whether we frame it as “what a buyer discounts” or “what you keep by fixing it.”
Weddings and events, corporate and hospitality standing orders, and subscriptions are the durable layer in a no-contract trade — the closest a florist has to recurring revenue. Growing this contracted base is what shifts a shop from the SDE basis toward the EBITDA basis and lifts the multiple.
adds about 0.1–0.4× to your multiple · usually takes 12–24 months
A lead designer and event coordinator carrying the design and buying so the shop produces without the owner is the single biggest transferability lever — it defuses the owner-is-the-shop attack and moves you up the band.
adds about 0.1–0.3× to your multiple · usually takes 12–24 months
Low daily spoilage (tight buying, FIFO cooler discipline) and a book weighted toward full-margin direct orders rather than wire-service volume both widen the margin a buyer underwrites.
adds about 0.1–0.3× to your multiple · usually takes 6–18 months
A diversified mix — events, corporate/hospitality, subscriptions, walk-in — flattens the Valentine's/Mother's-Day spikes so the shop isn't a two-holiday business, which a buyer credits as durable revenue.
adds about 0.1–0.3× to your multiple · usually takes 6–18 months
Typical impact ranges blended from lower-middle-market transaction data, sub-$50M M&A databases, and observed consolidator pricing in the $300K–$3M EBITDA band. Directional, not a guarantee — your memo computes your actual numbers from your books.
The metrics buyers grade flower shops on. The diagnostic fills the “your business” column from your actual QuickBooks data.
| Metric | Florists & Flower Shops benchmark | Your business | What it means |
|---|---|---|---|
| Recurring / contracted revenue | ~20% of revenue | Your data | Higher is better — the top multiple lever |
| Gross margin | ~62% | Your data | Pricing and job-costing discipline |
| EBITDA margin | ~10% | Your data | What flows to the bottom line |
| Healthy customer-concentration ceiling | top customer under 15% | Your data | Above it, buyers price the risk |
| Typical industry growth | ~2% / yr | Your data | Beating it can add to your multiple |
| Typical sale multiple | 1.5–4.9× EBITDA | Your data | Where the bidding starts; the levers above move you up |
Benchmarks are blended industry composites, service businesses $1M–$10M revenue, 2026-Q1 — directional, not a precise bar. Your memo measures you against your own books. Connect QuickBooks to fill in your numbers →
The diagnostic arrives as formats you can actually use, plus a private, scoped link to share a curated package with a specific buyer — you decide, card by card, what they see.
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Retail floral is a fragmented, low-multiple trade with thousands of independent owner-run shops and NO active PE roll-up. The big national names are marketplaces/service networks, not acquirers: 1-800-Flowers' BloomNet sells members wholesale flowers and POS, and FTD's debt-funded consolidation ended in 2019 bankruptcy. Your realistic buyer is an individual operator, a retiring-owner successor, or a neighboring florist expanding. Value comes from clean owner-normalized SDE/EBITDA, a designer who isn't you, and contracted event/corporate revenue — not a strategic premium. Set expectations on the median, not the p75.
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Most Florists & Flower Shops businesses in the $1M–$10M revenue range trade at roughly 1.5× to 4.9× normalized EBITDA, with a typical deal near 2.3×. Smaller, owner-dependent shops sit at the low end; larger, manager-run businesses with recurring revenue reach the top. Your actual number depends on your books — that's what the diagnostic computes, blending recent lower-middle-market closings, main-street marketplace sales, and academic M&A survey data.
A small owner-run shop is valued on SDE (~1.78x DealStats 453110 median) because you're the designer — the buyer adds your full compensation back, then charges a market floral-designer wage to replace you. A larger operation with employed designers and a real event book earns the EBITDA basis (~2.28x median).
They add volume but earn thin — wire services keep ~20-27% of the order value — so a wire-heavy book values lower per revenue dollar than direct, full-margin orders. A buyer values the wire-service revenue net, not gross, so growing direct web/phone orders is worth more than the same dollars of wire volume.
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