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My brand quickly gained popularity on TikTok, pushing me to expand operations. At the same time, my favorite coffee shop was struggling to keep up with COVID. Our small businesses both needed a way to survive the pandemic.
We repurposed their unused dining room as my physical storefront, effectively creating the Bay Area's first plant-cafe.
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I spent most of the pandemic collecting plants. At my peak, I had over 120 and was known as the neighborhood "plant lady". To share my knowledge with others, I created a Tik Tok account that taught people about plant care. I also sold some of my plants from my backyard when my collection became unmanageable.
Six months after starting my Tik Tok account, a few videos had gone viral and people were buying more plants than my backyard operation could handle.
While I was focused on expanding, Academic Coffee was fighting to stay open. They had to shut down their dining room due to restrictions on indoor dining and faced inflated costs due to supply-chain disruptions.
When I approached the Academic team for a partnership, we saw a mutual opportunity. The collaboration would allow me to expand my operations with a physical storefront, while they would benefit from increased customer traffic, exposure and sales by hosting another business on their premises.
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We shared a space but operated as separate entities. As a one-woman operation, I managed everything from sourcing to marketing to sales. Running the shop while being a full-time grad student meant I couldn't keep the shop open as often as the café.
To manage demand, I built an e-commerce shop where customers could order plants in advance and pick them up during my operating hours.
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My product offering included plants sourced from local farms in Half Moon Bay and South San Francisco. This strategy supported local agriculture and allowed me to easily restock inventory. In addition to plants, I also sold bouquets and floral arrangements.
By request, I designed wedding florals, decorated corporate events, provided interior design consulting and rehabilitated dying plants.
Everything sold in the plant shop was branded with the Mother Pucking Nature logo (which I kept consistent with Tik Tok to help followers recognize it "in the wild"). To celebrate the partnership with Academic Coffee, I created joint branding that combined our brand colors and imagery. This joint branding appeared on stickers and tote bags, and we recruited local influencers to promote our merchandise.
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A major theme of the plant-cafe was collaboration with other small businesses. Similarly to how Academic housed my plant store in their cafe, I allowed local artists and businesses to sell their merchandise in the shop. This gave them greater exposure to customers and higher engagement whenever we co-marketed on social media.
Our collaborations weren't just acts of goodwill; they resulted in higher sales and social media engagement with each new partnership. The peaks in September, January and May represent collaborations with Doodle and Do Good, You Love Poon and Habibi Ceramics, respectively. On average, each partnership increased social media engagement by 193% and sales by 300%.
When I created Mother Pucking Nature, I didn't expect the brand to grow like it did - I simply wanted to share my love of plants with others. The brand's unexpected success meant I spent more time reacting to changes than planning my next steps. While this kept me agile and adaptable, it also hindered the business from reaching its full potential.
Nonetheless, this experience ignited a passion for entrepreneurship and taught me important lessons about business growth, planning and market adaptation.
