‘I know you’ve got my back’: Ross business owner focuses on quality of life

The prevailing employer attitude toward workers seems to focus on squeezing blood from the proverbial turnip, with regard to little but the bottom line.

Franklin Park resident Stephanie Kirby offers quite the change of pace with her business, the Blue Daisy Floral Design in Ross.

“It’s very much quality of life and making sure that everybody is happy and wanting to come to work,” she said. “We’re hoping it’s an idea that takes off.”

As such, she’s glad to share details about what she calls her family-first business model, a basis for which is avoiding any one person being solely responsible for any aspect of the operation. She likened the sharing of responsibilities at the Blue Daisy to a Venn diagram, with its overlapping circles.

“Everybody knows what somebody else does, to some degree, so that you can step away and take a day off. And you don’t feel like someone’s going to text you or call you on your day off because you’re the only one who knows how to do that,” Kirby said.

“We try to really balance each other in that way, and everybody’s very accommodating and open to that, knowing: I might take your shift here, but I know you’ve got my back next time.”

Her four full-time employees all are women.

“We’re at varying degrees of life. Some of us have young kids. Some of us have adult kids. Some of us don’t have any kids,” she reported. “And it’s not just always about taking care of your kids. We may need to take care of parents, and even our own mental health and being able to be comfortable taking time off and saying, ‘You know what? I need to take care of myself.’”

Kirby’s daughters — Ruby, 8, and Leah, 5 — often spend time at the Blue Daisy, something Stephanie did as a child at her family’s business, Lenhart’s Tire and Auto Service in North Huntingdon. Her father, Ken, was the third-generation owner before he retired, and brother Nick now is in charge.

Anna, their mother, was situated in the back office, paying bills. Stephanie learned the concept of alphabetical order at a young age while helping file invoices.

“Mom put me to work early on, probably just to keep me from pestering her, which is what I do to my kids now,” she said, laughing. “But she paid me, so I understood equating work and money, and because I went to work with them all the time, I had money before all my friends did. We’d go to the mall, and I wouldn’t have to ask Mom for money.”

At age 16, she started working at a garden center that included a floral shop. After graduating from Penn-Trafford High School, she started college by majoring in social work but decided to change directions.

“I had spent all those years in the garden center and really loved it. So I transferred to Penn State to pursue a degree in horticulture,” she said, with a minor in business.

From University Park, she took a job in suburban Philadelphia, spending her spare time “journaling a business plan. I knew I was going to start something of my own.”

She returned to Pittsburgh, married Patrick Kirby, rented a Perry Highway studio to specialize in flowers for weddings and other events, and eventually developed need for more space.

That led her to a building at the Ross Township corner of Rochester and Reis Run roads.

“We had signed the lease at the very beginning of 2020 to move in here. March 1, 2020, is when the lease started,” she recalled.

Of course, the start of the covid-19 pandemic shut everything down in a matter of weeks.

“We obviously weren’t doing weddings and events, because they were all canceled, so we just started doing deliveries and pickups for retail flowers,” she said. “I found out pretty quickly the amazing impact that everyday flowers can have on people.”

For example, she mentioned a woman who received a bouquet shortly after a cancer diagnosis.

“She wrote me this big, long email about phenomenal they were and how the just made her day. And her son, who was caring for her, his day was made,” Kirby reported. “That just really stuck with me. Weddings and events can have that effect, too, but it’s very different.”

Being employed at the Blue Daisy is very different, as far as retail manager Kathleen Tessaro is concerned.

“I worked at a lot of different establishments in the city of Pittsburgh, and I am proud to say this is, by far, the best-organized, and what an amazingly lovely working atmosphere,” she said. “Stephanie’s horticultural background is invaluable.”

The feeling is mutual.

“She is very, very good at making sure the flowers are absolute top quality. We’re very obsessed with that,” Kirby said about Tessaro. “I couldn’t do what we do here without this team. They’re phenomenal.”

The Blue Daisy’s blog offers everything flowers: thebluedaisyfloral.com/floral-news.