Category: Jim’s Corner

This is Mother’s Day Weekend, one of the busiest times of the year for us. It’s a time to celebrate not just your own mother, but all of the moms, grandmothers, and surrogate moms who have inspired us and make us stronger every day. We would not be who, or where, we are today without them.

As part of our Moms Matter Even More this Year campaign, we invited you to share stories of a mother that you’re thankful for in your own lives. The stories we received left us speechless. Take Rachel’s mom, Deborah. Deborah is an operating room nurse who broke her foot at work a week before the pandemic hit. Deborah rehabbed and was able to convince her orthopedic doctor to remove her cast, and instead put her in a walking boot, so she could get back to work on the front lines to battle this crisis. In the words of her daughter, Deborah has “a true servant’s heart and is one special nurse” – we couldn’t agree more.

We also heard of the selflessness of Natalie’s mom, Jennifer. When Natalie became a single parent of three and joined the Army active duty, Jennifer dropped everything and lived with Natalie and her three boys at her first duty station. When Natalie was deployed to Germany, Jennifer stayed back home and was an amazing grandmother.

Then there’s Bridget, Tyreke and Tyler’s mom. Bridget is a mental health counselor who continued taking calls from patients and referrals alike at no fee. According to her boys, Bridget also prays with the people unsure and fearful of the future in the face of the coronavirus, while still taking care of her family and working towards her Master’s degree – an inspiration for us all.

With schools closed and so much work being done remotely, mothers are being asked to do more than ever this year. We rely on them to hold our families together, to continue celebrating special moments even amidst this challenging time.

Today we are also celebrating, and thinking about, the remarkable mothers in our own family. We witnessed our grandmother manage and grow a local business in a male-dominated-field. We watched our own mother fight tirelessly on behalf of her special-needs son (our brother, Kevin). Our wives, Marylou and Kathy, have shaped our families, and have been true partners in business. Our sister, Julie, has worked with our Creative Workshops and our company’s signature philanthropic partner, Smile Farms. Chris’ daughter, Jenna, who joined the company last year, decided to celebrate Mother’s Day by having her first child on May 6 (Congratulations!). We have been amazed to watch her navigate the challenges of bringing a child into the world during these difficult times. Our company, and our family, would not be what it is today if not for the tenacity, kindness, and hard work of these and other “McCann Mothers.”

Even if you can’t be together in person, make sure you find a way to make this weekend special for the mothers in your life. Tell them how much you miss and appreciate them, maybe even share a story or two of how much they’ve helped you along the way. We’ll be sure to do the same.

Happy Mother’s Day,

Jim and Chris

A Note From Our Founder, Jim McCann

The week ahead is an important one – Administrative Professionals Week. Believe me, it’s one we feel very strongly about here, and I want to tell you why.

To me, this week is an opportunity to celebrate the people in our professional lives who make things happen. As many of us transition to working remotely, some of these folks may be more out of sight than usual. But they should never be far from our minds. If anything, I suspect many of them are working harder than ever – setting up remote offices; coordinating schedules at a distance; keeping facilities clean and up and running for when normal hours resume.

I could never accomplish half of what I do – nor do it with a smile on my face – without the amazing work of my assistant, Patty. We’ve worked together for nearly 28 years. Patty, Jo, Lisa, Susan, Kim, Barbara, Tammy, Letty, Marilyn, Andrea and the other amazing administrative professionals at 1-800-Flowers.com are the people who just “make things happen” and we are all incredibly grateful.

Show How Much You Care

Whether you have an administrative professional reporting to you directly or not, we all have people at our offices or workplaces who make the business run smoothly. Make sure you go out of your way to thank them this week and let them know what their work means to you.

I’d suggest we all learn from our 1-800-Flowers.com CMO, Amit Shah. During our all-team offsite meeting last summer in Long Island, NY Amit took half his time on stage to thank those individuals by name who make things happen at 1-800-Flowers.com. Hank and Edward in building services, Brian in the mailroom and Jeanne in reception. It was wonderfully moving and an example for us all.

The administrative professionals in your life may not be there when you walk in these days, nor walking the halls during your workday. So, make sure you go out of your way to thank them. Send a text. Make a phone call. Write an old-fashioned note. Make sure they know how indispensable they are – in these crazy times, more than ever.

A Note From Our Founder, Jim McCann

We are facing an unprecedented challenge. Our professional and personal lives have been upended. The way we work, study, socialize, worship and more will be different for some time yet. Unlike crises past, this is one that affects every one of our families.

A Time to Reflect

If there is any silver lining to this crisis, it is that we are being pushed into a heightened state of consciousness. I consider this kind of situation a “forcing function”. The term dates to the 19th century, but it’s most often used today, in user experience design, to describe a feature that prevents someone from taking action without giving it their explicit attention.

For me, a forcing function prevents us from living our lives on autopilot. By disrupting our normal rhythms, the virus is forcing us all to take a closer look at our lives. Some things that seemed important in our busy daily lives may no longer seem as critical. And now we may see more clearly the people and experiences that deeply matter.

These Holidays Will be Different

We are coming up on two major holidays, Passover and Easter, which will give us all even more opportunity to reflect on the truly important. Most of us will be celebrating differently this year, but it is our responsibility – for our families, the memories of our children and our communities – to make them as meaningful as possible. Look around the table. Encourage everyone to tell a story about a friend or relative who couldn’t attend. Maybe capture those stories on your phone and send them to your loved ones. Or surprise them with a FaceTime call. I am planning to do some combination of the above.

Easter celebrates new beginnings. Passover recalls the suffering of our ancestors and the great fortune of those who survived to keep the faith alive. Let’s think of these times as a forcing function that ask us to renew our faith, our relationships, and our commitment to the values we hold dear.

Anticipating the holidays, I think back to what my parents and grandparents went through in the Great Depression. It taught them the difference between wants and needs. To never lose sight of what matters most. They never forgot the lessons of the past, and instilled them in me and in my brother, Chris, whose focus is devoted to our business and our customers during this difficult moment.

From Chris, CEO

In these trying times, I am so proud of the effort and care our team is exerting. Our management team is devoted to weathering this storm and has been doing a great job attending to the needs of our team members, vendors, communities, and our customers, who are relying on us to express and connect more than ever.

In our family growing up, there were certain relatives we only saw at Easter time, like my Uncle Author and Aunt Laura. I have great memories of those visits. It’s important to make celebratory moments special for our team members, families and communities. As Jim said, these holidays are going to be different but it’s within our power to craft our behaviors to make them meaningful and special. The challenge we face as a company, and a community, is how do we make them meaningful and memorable.

Easter and Passover are a wonderful time for you to reach out to those you miss, care about and hold dear whether by a text, a phone call or an email. These holidays will certainly feel less celebratory than in years past. But we all owe it to ourselves, our communities, our families, and especially our children, to keep our traditions alive – even if we do them a little differently this time.

Wishing you health and safety,

Jim & Chris

Jim McCann
Founder

Chris McCann
President & CEO
1-800-FLOWERS.COM, Inc.

Thoughts and Advice from 1-800-Flowers.com Founder Jim McCann

“If there is one silver lining to this fast-unfolding crisis, it has been remaining in close contact with my immediate family. I am lucky in that my three grown children and grandchildren are all (relatively) nearby. Over the last four or five days, I’ve had many more conversations than usual with my son-in-law, my daughter, and my two sons. Even while I worry about what they’re feeling – anxiety, fear of the unknown – all this contact has made me feel better. Today, I suggested that we have a daily conference call for the four of us. We first tried it this morning. We talked about real things, no nonsense at all. It was reassuring and, I think, healthy. I heard their concerns, and we talked about problems and solutions, namely, what to do if someone gets sick.

I suggested previously that you think about the people in your life you want to connect with – or even connect with on a more regular basis – and divide them into four groups: friends, family, coworkers and neighbors. I urged you to develop a contact plan and get into the habit of checking in on a regular basis, for your benefit and theirs.

I also would encourage you to use the amazing new communication technologies available today – Zoom, FaceTime, Skype, Google Hangouts, etc. – to create regular group conversations among your family or specific groups of friends. If you have older folks in your circles who have never embraced a technology like that, do them a favor: Call them and walk them through setting it up. It will change their lives. In these anxious times, it’s more important than ever that they can see familiar faces as well.”