Bill Zalakar has always been a self-starter. At the age of 10, he was ordering seeds and planting vegetables, and by the time he was 14, he was hauling hundreds of pounds of tomatoes to the local grocery stores to make a little bit of money. He ended up being so successful that he paid most of his way through college.

He learned early on that for some things, you have to rely on Mother Nature, but his long-term goal was to find something he could have a little more control over.

Bill was lucky enough to live right beside a large greenhouse company called Johnson Florists in Pittsburgh. So, at 16, he applied for a job and applied again, and again, and again. Finally, the company told him that if he would work the night shift helping with the boilers, they would let him do a little greenhouse work.

He jumped at the chance and landed his first job in horticulture. “I always knew that’s what I wanted,” Bill says. From there, he went on to study horticultural business at Penn State.

After founding his own successful perennial growing operation called Hoff Gardens, Bill started down a new path at Kurt Weiss Greenhouses in Center Moriches, New York, where he now leads the team as general manager at the main location.

Creating teams

Century-old Kurt Weiss Greenhouses is very much a family business, and that includes Bill. Even though he doesn’t share the Weiss name, he’s a family member nonetheless, says Kirk Weiss. Kirk, who runs the operation with his semi-retired father, Russell, his brother and his two sons, has known Bill for more than 20 years.

“We’re basically the same age and it’s almost like we’ve grown up in the business together,” Kirk says. “He’s always willing to lend a helping hand no matter what.”

And Bill treats his employees like family as well. He and his wife regularly invite crew leaders to their house for dinner parties and find different ways to keep up the company morale. “That’s what I think I learned most from Russell Weiss, is making it feel like you’re a part of the family,” Bill says. “Some companies, they just lose that touch and the people don’t feel like giving that extra effort.”

Bill’s friendly nature and calm demeanor have helped him enact real change for both Kurt Weiss Greenhouses and the industry. Whether serving on the advisory board for Cornell University or the Long Island Farm Bureau where he’s acting president, Bill finds a way to lead people to make the right decision, says Mark Bridgen, Cornell professor and director of the Long Island Horticultural Research and Extension Center. Mark describes Bill as the “Dr. Fauci of horticulture” because he always provides accurate information and hopes that people follow.

“Whenever he’s trying to convince a person or a group of people to see things his way, he presented the facts and the issues and hoped that the information that he gives is going to be enough to convince them to change their minds or to follow his lead,” he says. “He’s always impressive that way.”

Building from the ground up

As general manager at Kurt Weiss’ main location, Bill has had a hand in almost every aspect of the business. Any initiatives the company starts, Bill is there from the very beginning through to the day-to-day execution.

That’s understandable for a man who has done “basically every job” in the greenhouse, according to Kirk. “Our philosophy, as well as Bill’s, is that we work together. So, we wouldn’t ask somebody to do something we haven’t done ourselves, and we’ve done every one of these jobs,” he says. “If you’ve already done it, you understand the job.”

Kirk says two of Bill’s great strengths as a leader in the greenhouse are that depth of industry knowledge and his communication skills. That combination makes him a natural leader.

“It’s very easy to get people to follow him versus if you brought somebody in that knew nothing about the industry and didn’t know what it takes,” Kirk says. “That means a lot.”

And in his time at Kurt Weiss, Bill has been able to build a management team he trusts, including managers for maintenance, inventory, production, sales and growing. The team meets each week to discuss plans for production, shipping and everything in between.

But Bill doesn’t just keep up with the upper management team. He makes sure to do his rounds in the greenhouse. “I do have a lot of involvement with the employees,” he says. “I’m constantly walking around the greenhouse or in the field talking to everybody.”

Diversifying the labor pool

Kirk says Bill has really helped Kurt Weiss Greenhouses navigate the changing landscape of hiring from simple word-of-mouth to delving into the different ways to diversify the labor pool.

In past years, to combat the ever-present issue of finding labor, Bill initiated several student programs, working with student organizations at The Ohio State University and with agriculture students from different countries around the world. “It has just helped a lot on the labor side of our business and scheduling,” Kirk says.

The company has gone from one full crew that worked whatever hours it took to get the job done to splitting the work up into shifts. Now, the greenhouse has a night shift and a loading crew, with enough laborers to staff each.

“It’s been challenging the last few years — very challenging — to find labor. Every industry is facing that,” Kirk says. “We had to get really creative in how we attract labor — finding what time of day people had availability and working on setting up different shifts. It sounds easier than it is, but he’s working on a lot of that.”

Leading from the front

When COVID-19 hit, Kurt Weiss Greenhouses began throwing out Easter crops (Bill estimates the company destroyed about 70%). And while the company was missing out on early spring revenue, they were also trying to navigate social distancing and new sanitation procedures, Bill was leading the charge.

The greenhouse, like many others in the industry, wasn’t sure if they could remain open, Kirk says. By working alongside his colleagues at the Long Island Farm Bureau, Bill was able to make the case for greenhouses to be deemed ‘essential.’

Bill made several trips to Albany to explain the situation to New York Agriculture Commissioner Richard Ball, explaining that “plants are like animals,” Mark says. “They were giving exceptions to animal facilities with cows and horses, because somebody had to feed the cows and so on. And Bill convinced the commissioner that plants are the same way. If they don’t get watered; if they don’t get cared for, they can’t survive, and the industry is going to suffer tremendously. He’s been one of the behind-the-scenes people that actually have been able to get things open for us.”

But that’s not the first time Bill has gone to bat for the industry. When Bill served on the advisory board at Cornell University. Mark says Bill was never afraid to be a voice for the industry whenever conflicts might arise at the university.

Mark describes Bill as “very outgoing, very friendly and very unassuming,” which has helped him become not only a voice for the industry, but a consensus-builder. “He’s not arrogant; he’s not forceful. He’s just a pleasant man who knows what he’s talking about and can convince people without being obnoxious. He can just convince people of the right thing to do.”

What’s next

Bill has no plans to stop anytime soon and retirement is nowhere on the horizon. “The way it’s going right now is just the perfect following of my life how I would like it to be,” Bill says. Through work with the Long Island Farm Bureau, he hopes to advance into other key leadership positions.

“I want to put my efforts to help better our industry and see it grow so that it just doesn’t disappear,” he says. “To be able to utilize my resources and my involvement with all the people that I’ve met in the industry and in the political sector, I want to try to pull them together to educate a lot of the politicians, as well as a lot of the public out there about our industry, and help our industry grow. So, if I can take that path and keep going down that road, that would be happiness.”

As with most things in 2020, Greenhouse Management’s State of the Industry Report looks a little different than it has in past years.

After a bumpy and extremely uncertain start to the year, sales for many skyrocketed after the Easter weekend. Today, confidence in the industry (which had already been on the upswing in recent years) stands at an all-time high.

Five years ago, the number of growers who were ‘confident’ or ‘very confident’ that the industry would grow was only 36%, but that number has grown fairly steadily over the years, hitting 40% in 2018, 59% in 2019 and a whopping 67% this year.

And that’s for good reason. A full 90% of growers expect to turn a profit this year, with nearly two-thirds expecting an increase in net profit over last year.

Looking forward to 2021, vegetable and herb plants will likely be gaining greenhouse real estate following this spring’s high demand for edible plants, along with indoor foliage plants as the houseplant craze continues to gain popularity.

Read on for more insights into the current state of the industry and the changes that came with this year. — Kate Spirgen

The biggest increase we’ve seen this year has been indoor foliage plants, which isn’t surprising considering the emergence of ‘plant parents’ and the rising popularity of houseplants. Succulents, on the other hand, have dropped by 10 percentage points since last year’s report, falling back to the same numbers we saw in 2016 and 2017.

While the number of greenhouses growing annuals/bedding color and perennials hasn’t varied greatly over the past five years or so, cannabis has been steadily growing from just 1% five years ago to 10% today, jumping 6 percentage points this year alone. Cut flowers are also seeing more popularity this year as more growers are now devoting space to them than in the past five years.

With the resurgence of interest in vegetable gardening during the COVID-19 outbreak, edibles are in high demand. The number of growers expecting edibles to see the biggest increase in production this year grew by 15 percentage points, while the number expecting to increase production over the next year increased by 14 percentage points since last year’s survey.

Herb plants are seeing a similar rise, with more growers planning to see an increase both in 2020 and in the next 12 months than in the past five years: 14 and 10 percentage points, respectively.

When we first asked growers how COVID-19 was affecting their businesses in March, their outlooks were drastically different than what they are today. While we didn’t see much change in terms of how much of an impact growers felt overall, many more growers are now seeing an increase in sales because of the pandemic. Back in March, only about one-tenth of operations reported an uptick in sales. Today, nearly two-thirds are seeing more sales and the number of growers seeing a decline in sales has dropped 45 percentage points since March.

So while things were looking pretty bleak before Easter, sales and confidence in the industry has rebounded due to improved spring and summer sales.

We asked growers how the COVID-19 pandemic has affected their business or the industry at large. Here’s what they had to say in their own words.

Editor’s note: Responses have been edited for length and clarity.

“COVID, although we were unsure at first, had a significantly positive effect on our business. When paired with the perfect weather (honestly, one of the top spring seasons of my career), it all brought in so many new customers. Sales were unlike anything I have seen, and it didn’t stop. Our summer season was incredible and fall is starting off on the right foot as well.”

“I don’t really know. Easter was a huge loss. Spring was much better. I don’t know what next year will bring.”

“Our customer base was 90% restaurants until COVID. We were forced to reinvent our business model to direct to consumers and to retailers instead. It’s been a challenge!”

“Labor is very difficult to find because of high unemployment wages!”

“COVID-19 has been a game changer. Predictability of the future cycles is unattainable, and it seems it is a big guessing game.”

“Some areas of business like plant rentals and events are greatly impacted, while exterior services are up.”

“People have had more time to take an interest in gardening and I think that this will have a positive effect on future growing seasons.”

“It has forced consumers to spend time in their own home environments and gardens, and the realization of a need for plants, both outdoor and indoor plants, was very well seen during this COVID pandemic.”

“Mail-order and direct-to-consumer orders were up while large public jobs were down. Our number of orders increased while the average size of orders decreased.”

“The margins are too slim for a lot of people to be able to hold on. Those that were on firmer financial footing before the beginning of the year have a better chance of getting through whatever the market has in store for us in the coming two years.”

“The mishmash of laws and statutes across city, state and county borders made for a “hold on to your hats” mode. The biggest wonder is whether or not people will have less money to spend next year and whether we will have the same issues finding help.”

Until a few years ago, Coview Farm and Greenhouses in Cane Valley, Kentucky, was primarily a vegetable farm that sold its products at farmers markets. Now, however, the business is producing annuals and perennials to sell at farmers markets, and also at its greenhouses. 

“We’ve always had flowers, but we’ve been growing more and more the last few years,” says owner Darrell Bunnell. “We’ve added another greenhouse and we’re thinking about doing another greenhouse. It’s mostly annuals, but we do we want to get more into perennials because we have demand for a few perennials. It’s something that people have asked us to grow.” 

Cane Valley is almost two hours away from Louisville and Bunnell says the only massive flower retailer in the area is a local Lowe’s and a nearby Wal-Mart. With an eye on the future of the business — Bunnell is 65 and one of his daughters is likely to take over the business at some point — he wanted to do something that was both easier to manage and more lucrative. 

“At my age, I can’t do the vegetables like I used to,” says Burrell, who plans to work as ‘long as he can walk.’

“We used to have 4, 5 acres of vegetables and that’s a lot more labor-intense than greenhouse work. Greenhouse work is still hard, but it’s not as bad. I’m just trying to get things set up so that when I’m gone, she can continue.” 

Meeting demand amid a pandemic

Each of the past few years, Burrell says he has seen flower sales rise. 

“It gets better every year,” he says. “We did really well on our spring flowers — hanging baskets and all that — and I think we could have sold a lot more. The vegetable side of it, you can always have more, but we just don’t have enough and it’s hard to do more. Even with the problems we’ve had with the virus this year, it’s still hasn’t stopped our sales a whole lot.” He estimates that sales are up at least 50%.

In Kentucky, Coview met the qualifications of an ‘essential business.’ Andy Beshear, a Democrat elected in 2019, required workers to maintain a 6-foot distance and wear a mask at essential businesses. As of Sept. 21, Kentucky has had 65,413 total cases and 1,139 deaths, according to the state government. 

“The governor was pretty gung-ho about keeping the [farmers] markets and greenhouses open and going,” Burrell says. “It was kind of different to start with, but we’ve gotten used to it.”

Customer-wise, he says the only group that he’s seen less of are older customers.

“Other that, we haven’t seen a reduction in people coming in or reaching out,” he says. Petunias are the best-selling annual this year, but Burrell adds that “everyone seems crazy about any flower.”

According to Burrell, being open during the pandemic allowed Coview to continue competing with the big-box stores in the area that also stayed open. He thinks that his sales rose in part because their plants are higher quality and sold direct to consumers vs. the plants available at Lowe’s or Wal-Mart.

“Wal-Mart’s stuff is really pretty bad all the time,” he says. “Lowe’s isn’t a whole lot better, but Lowe’s has such volume and are open seven days a week.” 

One key to sales success, according to Burrell: having customers pay remotely via card using Square. He says they’ve used the service at farmers markets for years. 

Expansion after COVID-19

Beyond this year, Burrell says the plan is to build a storefront near the greenhouse to better display plants when customers arrive. The plan was to do so this year, but rising lumber costs meant it wasn’t feasible. For now, there will be a makeshift storefront. 

“We had to get a power line in and water in too,” he adds. “So I want to get the infrastructure done first and go from there.”  

Burrell says sales are a mix of customers just dropping in and reaching out via Facebook about what’s available and what they can order before it’s gone. Next year, the plan is to diversify the offerings as well.

“People come at just about any time really and that’s kind of hard because we might be out in the field working,” he says. “But it all works out.” 

Overall, Burrell attributes the businesses’ growth — even during a pandemic — to Coview filling a need in its region of Kentucky. He says there are “very few” greenhouses in the area and no independent garden centers to cater to consumers. In the months and years ahead, the plan is to keep doing just that. 

“We still provide a fairly decent product at a fair price,” he says. “And people are pleased. We haven’t had anyone say anything bad about anything they’ve bought from us. I think that helps too. We have a pretty good, trustworthy name. We’ve got a good name in the market from having been at farmers markets for over 20 years. I think that all helps.” 

The green industry has faced its share of adversity in the form of weather phenomena, financial crises and pest or disease plights. This year required modifications from the entire supply chain that will be studied and analyzed for years. This is the year your future grandkids will want to hear about for a social studies project.

As we ride out this latest recession, the economy is certainly a concern, but it still came in second behind labor issues as the greatest threats to the industry.

With this year’s surge in consumer interest in gardening, nurseries are reporting increased sales and profits in 2020 vs. 2019. More than 60% of those surveyed raised prices this year, and almost 70% plan to raise prices in 2021. Despite the peaks and valleys of 2020, the industry remains fairly confident that market demand for nursery products will increase in 2021.

Growers who create a business plan with several variables or scenarios, while remaining flexible, will help ensure that the industry bends and doesn’t break.

— Kelli Rodda, editor, Nursery Management

Sales & prices

Sales in 2020 to landscapers far outweigh any other market segment with those surveyed. Rounding out the top three market segments were independent garden centers and re-wholesalers. There was almost no change of sales to those segments in 2019. For a look at the IGC and landscape markets, turn to pages 28 and 30 for a sneak peek at the State of the Industry reports from our sister

publications. In terms of raising prices in 2020, 38% increased prices 1%-4% and 38% chose not to raise prices this year. It’s a different story for next year. In 2021, half of those surveyed plan to raise prices by 1%-4% and 30% of growers don’t plan to raise prices at all.

Production & crops

Just under half (49%) of growers reported shortages this year. Some of those crops include flowering shrubs, blueberries, fruit trees and perennial plugs. Several growers cited this year’s increased consumer demand for plants and shipping problems for the shortages. Some 57% do not anticipate shortages in 2021.