United Supermarkets business director of floral Bradley Gaines and Tessacorp's Jennie Garbarek

In this third installment of our 2025 floral series, we're delighted to have as our guests Bradley Gaines, business director of floral for United Supermarkets, Market Street and Albertsons Market, and Jennie Garbarek, sales director of mass market, North America, for floral supplier Tessacorp. Our regular listeners will recall that Jennie also has a retail background with stops including Roundy’s, Mariano’s and SpartanNash. In this conversation, Bradley, Jennie and The Produce Retail Podcast host Ashley Nickle discuss best practices for staffing floral departments, from internship programs to hiring criteria to skills to teach. Bradley and Jennie also talk about the potential of AI for use in training new employees, how younger team members bring value to the team, the benefits of starting all new hires in the floral department, and the value of career training programs — which include floral and meat — that allow high school students to hit the ground running when they start full-time jobs with the company. Bradley also takes listeners behind the scenes on how posting on TikTok has increased awareness of and engagement with United's floral offerings; he discusses his initial reaction to the idea of embracing TikTok, what got him on board with the idea, the kind of content the team creates, who takes the videos, who posts them, collaboration with the marketing team, and more. Bradley and Jennie also cover the topic of e-commerce as a growing channel for floral. Hope you enjoy the conversation as much as we did!See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.