Keeppley Red Rose Florist Set C0104

Keeppley's Red Rose Florist is a City Corner model built from 329 blocks, measuring 19.8 × 8.8 × 7.9 cm assembled. Printed instructions included. Age 6+.

A florist is mostly a refrigerator

The shop you see is the small part. Behind or below almost every florist is a cold room held at around 2 to 4 degrees, and it is the single largest piece of equipment in the business.

The reason is that a cut flower is still alive and still using itself up. Cold slows everything down — respiration, water loss, the production of ethylene, the gas that ripens fruit and makes petals drop. A rose kept at four degrees lasts several times as long as the same rose in a warm shop.

Which is why the flowers on display are not the stock. They are the shop window; the stock is in the cold and comes out as needed. A florist who displays everything is a florist throwing away a third of it.

The other half of the job is knowing which flowers cannot be stored together. Fruit and some flowers give off ethylene, and a few blooms are so sensitive to it that a bowl of apples in the same room will finish them.

Eleven shops that make a street

City Corner sets are designed to stand shoulder to shoulder — narrow shopfronts around 18 to 20 cm tall with flat side walls. A run of four or five becomes a terrace, and reads as a place in a way one building never does.

The others are the dessert house (C0101), café (C0102), cosmetics store (C0103), fashion store (C0105), bookshop (C0107), teddy store (C0109), luxury store (C0110) and styling hall (C0111).

Specifications

Pieces: 329 · Series: Keeppley City Corner · Printed instructions · Age: 6+
Model dimensions: 19.8 × 8.8 × 7.9 cm (7.8 × 3.5 × 3.1 in)