Where Every Bouquet Tells a Story

The New York Times has a profile today of a Mimulo, a flower shop in Crown Heights, Brooklyn, owned by two young women, Chani Frankel and Freidel Levin.

On Friday afternoons, the headquarters of the Chabad sect of Orthodox Judaism comes alive as men in black jackets and hats stream like worker bees in and out of the subterranean entrance on Eastern Parkway in Brooklyn. Those exiting scatter across Crown Heights to prepare for the coming Sabbath — Shabbos in Yiddish — many drawn a block east by the overpowering smell of lilies and the ebullient welcome of Chani Frankel to Mimulo, a flower shop on Albany Avenue.

“Shalom, rabbi! How are you?” she asked one customer on a recent Friday, greeting others with a “Happy Shabbos!”

Mrs. Frankel, clad in an aquamarine headscarf and a denim dress, skipped around the counter at the back of the sun-drenched, 900-square-foot store, but altered her stride to reverently approach an imposing, middle-aged rabbi to go over flower options for that week.

“They say that on Valentine’s Day flower shops pull in a crazy amount of money,” she said after the rabbi left. “But we have Valentine’s every Shabbat.”

Mrs. Frankel and her business partner, Freidel Levin, both 26, had been up priming the walls until 1 that morning. The shop, which opened three years ago, was in the midst of one of its regular makeovers. A teal antique couch was standing on its head, undergoing repair by Mrs. Frankel’s father; the women had installed it for nursing mothers, knowing, with five children between them, how difficult feeding in public in Crown Heights can be. A hutch, from which they usually serve tea and coffee, was pushed up against a far wall. But no customers seemed to notice.

Continue reading the profile here.

Photos: Dave Sanders for The New York Times