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What to Send Instead of Flowers or Food


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Our mission at Beyond Flowers and Food is to offer unique and thoughtful gift packages for life’s toughest times.

We (Beth and Katie, sisters and co-founders) came up with this idea after losing our mom suddenly and unexpectedly to cancer a few years ago. In the days and weeks that followed her death, we were inundated with flowers and catered food. And while we so appreciated the gestures and felt so touched by the support, we felt badly when the flowers died and the food went uneaten.

In the years that followed, we found ourselves in this same predicament many times, where we wanted to support a friend or family member that is struggling but there were no gifting solutions out there.

Flowers and food have become the standard gifts for difficult situations such as sickness, grief, or when someone doesn’t know what else to send. The challenge with these gifts is that they can feel impersonal or generic, they’re expensive, people receive a lot of it so they feel commonplace and ordinary, they’re often not relevant to the recipient and they don’t make them feel special.

So what can you send instead? Beyond Flowers and Food packages include four main elements that we incorporated to create more meaningful and thoughtful gifts:

Inspirational or symbolic: All of our gift packages contain something that is inspirational or symbolic (for example, the Wonder Woman socks in our Send to a Cancer Warrior package or the angel in our Send a Guardian Angel package)

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Tangible: All of our gifts are meant to be worn/used by the recipient or displayed in their home (versus the disposable nature of flowers or food)

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Makes the recipient feel special: All of our gift packages arrive in a gift box and include a personal note from the sender and an insert card that explains the symbolism included in the gift

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Is easy on the sender: Many of our gift packages contain high-quality items not found in major retail stores, so from the comfort of their home, often for cheaper than a bouquet of flowers, the sender can select a unique, thoughtful, meaningful gift that will cut through the clutter and make the recipient feel special (and all with free shipping!)

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Finally, there’s a fresh new way to show you care!

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