Chicago shop delivering Valentine's Day flowers with a side of charity

CHICAGO (WLS) -- Flowers are a perennial favorite for Valentine's Day, no pun intended. So, local distributors have been working around the clock to fill all of their orders. One local business will deliver its flowers Wednesday with a side of charity

Crunch time started more than a month ago.

"We design our collection and determine what are the actual flower arrangements and bouquets that we'll be selling," said Brittany Graunke, CEO of Flowers For Dreams.

But the real madness is reserved for the next several hours.

"We have 20-30 really great delivery drivers and couriers and we'll have about 150 on Valentine's Day," Graunke said.

Flowers for Dreams delivers hundreds of bouquets on an average day. On Valentine's Day? That number grows into the thousands.

The business started in 2012 as a side hustle for then-college student Steven Dyme and a friend. Their flower truck was born after hundreds of dollars in peddling fines and a successful campaign to change one city ordinance.

"It was a law that was implemented by a florist to prevent competition in front of their shops," Dyme said.

Flowers for dreams has since grown into a game-changer for the industry.

Dyme's West Town crew assemble bouquets by price-point: $35 for a small. 55 for medium. $75 for large and $95 for an extra-large bouquet. The flowers are competitively priced and whatever the business does make on sales, 25-percent of the profits go to a good cause.

"We've contributed over a quarter million dollars to local charities," Dyme said.

And for the industry's biggest day? Flowers For Dreams has opened a pop-up shop in River North.

"We've expanded relatively slow for being around six years," Dyme said. "But it's important to us, again, that simple experience that's right and beautiful every time and our charities are still, kind of, at the forefront."

That pop-up shop is located at 406 North Wells Street. You can pick up a bouquet for your sweetheart there, or you can look for the Flowers For Dreams truck at Revival Food Hall in the Loop around lunchtime.