Behind the Plate Episode 1 - Malara Gardens - Chip Malara and Lisa Wera

In this episode, we visit Malara Gardens—a family-owned garden center and farmers market in Arvada, Colorado. Malara Gardens has been with the community since 1957. Today, host Antonio Howell sits down with Chip Malara, the current owner, who shares insights into the ownership and operations of the store. Chip discusses how they cultivate over 75% of their flowers on-site and source the remainder from local growers, ensuring high-quality plants for their customers. He also delves into procuring fresh produce from local farms in Brighton, Longmont, Pueblo, and Grand Junction, highlighting their commitment to supporting Colorado agriculture. Additionally, we speak with Lisa, the store manager, who oversees the floral arrangements and customer relations, ensuring that daily operations run smoothly and that patrons receive the friendly, helpful service that Malara Gardens is known for.

Transcript

Antonio Howell  0:02  
Perfect. Let's start with your story. How did you how did you end up doing what you did today? Both of you,

Chip Malara  0:11  
yeah. Well, my dad was a farmer. He farmed here. He farmed produce, all kind of vegetables. I and then when you grow up on a farm, I mean, I worked at the farm until I was out of high school. And when you grow up on a farm, first thing you want to do is get off the farm and do something else, yeah, of course. Oh, I did. I became an electrician. My brother was a plumber, my other brother was a mechanic, and my sister was office secretary, or whatever you call it. I don't know what the

Lisa Wera  0:59  
None of the five of you siblings wanted anything to do with farming. 

Chip Malara  1:03  
None of the five wanted anything to do with farming because we grew up in it, and it's a rough business. And I was electrician for a long time, and I got burned out on making everybody else money and not seeing what I could do for myself, and the opportunity opened up. My parents were getting older, so I thought I'd come back and and help them out. I didn't farm. I all I did was run the store for him, and so I got into it. 

Lisa Wera  1:47  
Was your dad still farming? 

Chip Malara  1:49  
yeah

Lisa Wera  1:50  
Who was helping him? Just,

Chip Malara  1:53  
Laborers. Okay, just laborers. 

Lisa Wera  1:56  
So you came back to help him sell his produce?

Chip Malara  1:59  
Yeah.

Lisa Wera  2:00  
okay,

Chip Malara  2:01  
And take care of other thing. He was getting kind of old, right? So that's what I was that's how I got back here, the reasoning why I got back here. Now, if it wasn't for my my dad and his connections  in the farming community, it would have been a lot harder for me to start up, because farmers are very tight lipped. They don't really want to help you if you're growing stuff for yourself or because they're always in competition with each other over price. And there's a, I don't know what you call it, a, like something that comes out that tells you what the prices in California are and like now the prices in California can't get any produce here, so you have to buy from California. Well, that is the price that they were willing to ship to you, like the Safeways and King Soopers and stuff like that. There's a set price. So that's how you how you set your prices for off, you know, for your store, off of that, off of, off of that,

Speaker 1  3:33  
Off of the California baseline, 

Chip Malara  3:37  
California line, or whatever they call there's a name for it. I can't remember what the name is, right now. I don't use it much anymore. We get now the internet is here, so you can just look online and find, you know, the price of everything. Back then it was like, you know, you had the call the wholesalers had a call every item, and they had to mark it down because there was no so that's, that's how that part is ran, getting your price pricing out.

Antonio Howell  4:20  
Okay, that's interesting. Next question, what does a typical day look like for you at Malara Gardens? So walk us through the process of how you tend to the flowers, handle produce and handle the business side of things.

Lisa Wera  4:36  
So

Chip Malara  4:37  
Go ahead.

Lisa Wera  4:38  
If you remember I told you that well, whether you remember or not, there's there's, well, there's five, there's like five or six different seasons that go on here. So each season has a different typical day. So do you mainly want to know about like, the produce, season day?

Antonio Howell  5:02  
Yeah, the Yeah, that'd be helpful.

Lisa Wera  5:05  
Okay, so talk about like a September day. Okay,

Chip Malara  5:08  
So you get up in the morning, early, you come and all, if you if you need to go buy stuff far as to stock your store. We're in a in a position here where farmers don't come in and deliver to us, because we're kind of out of the loop, you know, out of normal where everybody is. We're in Arvada. It's kind of, you know, not too many produce people out here used to be, used to be all farms. Now it's not so anyway, so get up in the morning. You have a list of stuff you gotta go get it. Yeah, in either go to the farms. On what day do I go? I go on Tuesday and Friday,

Lisa Wera  6:03  
Tuesday and Friday, generally, Tuesday and Friday 

Chip Malara  6:06  
To the farms. And there's wholesale house, wholesale produce houses. I usually go on Thursdays to them and or whenever I need something, you know, things like bananas, they don't grow here. You know, plums, whatever, it's easier to get them from the wholesaler than not have them, you know. So farmers, I just go out and and to their farms and get what they grow. And you gotta go to a couple different farms, because not every farm grows everything, everything there's they're getting to be more specialized farms, like one farm will do lettuce and peppers or something like that, and the other farm will do whatever, you know, other kind of vegetables. So you have to kind of know where you're going, know who to talk to, know where to, you know, and stuff like that. 

So then, then you, then you load your truck up. You come back here, unload it, put it, have them, put it in the cooler, which you need out on the on the in the store. You gotta take out, fill the store up. And hopefully you get all that done, and it's time to open. But you gotta, gotta go through every item that you sell, clean it up, take the bad out, you know, trim the cell, trim the celery, trim the the lettuce, you know, make it all look pretty. 

Antonio Howell  8:01  
Yeah,

Chip Malara  8:02  
It's all looking cruddy. They don't want to buy it, you know. So you gotta, you gotta make every item look full and pretty, okay. Then when you get that done, then you can open the doors and have some customers come in. 

Antonio Howell  8:18  
Perfect, 

Chip Malara  8:19  
yeah?

Lisa Wera  8:21  
So all of all of those farms that he goes to out like in Brighton and Longmont, they email a list every week that says, here's what we have that's ready. Here's the prices. And of course, they all want you to call ahead and say, This is what I want. So when you get there, you'll, they'll have it ready.

Antonio Howell  8:43  
Yeah,

Chip Malara  8:44  
Never happens, 

Lisa Wera  8:46  
Never happens. But at least once, once a week, we get the list so we can figure out, well, you know, Julie's got this and, and they have this and, and, oh, they finally have these ready. We can get these this week so we have an idea of what's available. 

Antonio Howell  9:02  
Okay, yeah, 

Lisa Wera  9:05  
okay.

Antonio Howell  9:06  
So with that, like, what pro you said you had five seasons, you have different produce every single season. Like, what do you specialize in the season? 

Lisa Wera  9:16  
No, the so, like, right now the season is off season and getting ready to plant. Oh yeah, we're not open, so we're cleaning up, and we're getting ready for all the baby plants to come here and we plant them up in the baskets and the and the cups and everything. So it'll just be planting season for a while, bedding plants for everything that you put in your your garden, your vegetables, your herbs, your hanging baskets, all of your plants. Then it is

Chip Malara  9:49  
we start that. Next month

Lisa Wera  9:52  
next month, we start planting everything.

Antonio Howell  9:54  
Okay, 

Lisa Wera  9:55  
Then by April, we're open. But. So our store mainly does just the plants for spring. We don't bring any produce in, mainly because we are a local produce seller, and there is no real local produce ready in April because they haven't planted it yet. So we could, we could be a market where he would go to the wholesalers and get tomatoes and onions and other produce that comes from all over the world, but we aren't, 

Antonio Howell  10:33  
yeah, 

Lisa Wera  10:33  
but we're not selling any produce in the spring, 

Antonio Howell  10:37  
yeah,

Lisa Wera  10:38  
or the winter, or the winter, because we're kind of not open, 

Antonio Howell  10:41  
yeah,

Lisa Wera  10:41  
So, by the time, you know, it gets to be about July, the farms are starting to get stuff ready. And we have sold the majority of our plants because people have got them all planted, and now they're done with planting. So then we have room in our inside now to do produce and what's left of the plants. So about July until Halloween is Colorado produce season. So then we're doing produce and what's left of the flowers. Then there's Christmas tree time. By that time, Colorado produce is done again. So we're not selling any more produce, 

Antonio Howell  10:43  
yeah 

Lisa Wera  10:44  
No more fruits and vegetables. We're just selling Christmas trees and that kind of stuff, and then we close.

Antonio Howell  11:33  
Okay,

Lisa Wera  11:35  
so you know, there are other, um, uh, markets, like high knees, doesn't sell produce year round. Does he? Does he? 

Chip Malara  11:51  
I think he closes for a couple,

Lisa Wera  11:55  
but like Young's, he doesn't do produce year round. So most of the other places that are garden centers like ours, that maybe have a produce market, they pretty much are Colorado local produce. So that produce season is just for when the farms have it ready.

Chip Malara  12:16  
Colorado farm, right? 

Lisa Wera  12:17  
The Colorado farms, oh,

Antonio Howell  12:19  
 yeah,

Chip Malara  12:21  
and we get the peaches from the western slope. All the fruit during the summer, we get it all from the western slope, because that's the only place in Colorado you can really grow it over there.

Antonio Howell  12:41  
So with talking about all those local farms, what's, what's the process, like, you kind of explained, you get the veggies, and then the so, like, do you use? Is there a certain amount of money that you put away to purchase all that produce 

Chip Malara  13:01  
you just gotta pay as you go. Hopefully you have enough money from the bedding plant season to float you through the vegetable season also, 

Antonio Howell  13:12  
oh yeah, 

Chip Malara  13:14  
Because we're already, we're already open in start to the end of April. So we're already open, making money, hopefully in April. So we, you know, April till July. That's, that's when we start the produce is in July. And I never really start the produce. I used to never really start the produce until the corn was ready because that was the number one seller. But now everything's coming in a little little differently. Now, so whenever, whenever it's time, it's time, you know, it's no specific time. Weather could change things from week to week. You know, either you start this week, or, you know, the weather's bad you start next week because they can't get out there and pick anything because the weather's bad, you know, rainy or whatever. So, yeah,

Antonio Howell  14:16  
 okay, 

Chip Malara  14:17  
everybody for the produce.

Antonio Howell  14:21  
I got a so, like, this year you were talking about how you didn't sell enough Christmas trees. So I got a question that's like, what's your biggest expenses? And then how do you control that cost while still running a business? So with all the Christmas trees not being sold, does that really affect your business. 

Chip Malara  14:41  
Oh, yeah, that's a big hit for me. That's a big financial hit, you know, because right now the Christmas trees are way expensive for one thing, and then you add the expensive trucking on top of that to get him from Oregon or Wisconsin to here, you gotta add that on each tree. So the trees are 

Lisa Wera  15:09  
super pricey, 

Chip Malara  15:10  
.. really pricey and, you know, I, I think people lost the Christmas spirit this year, you know? So I don't know what happened. 

Lisa Wera  15:27  
So

Chip Malara  15:27  
 It's just sometimes years you sell them all, sometimes you get stuck. It's just depends on the year,

Antonio Howell  15:36  
yeah,

Lisa Wera  15:37  
 okay, correct me if I'm wrong. In this the spring time is when this place generally makes the majority of the money. 

Antonio Howell  15:49  
Oh yeah

Lisa Wera  15:51  
That time, if we don't make or break it, then we're not going to do very well for the whole year financially. So we try to make as much money as we can as possible in the spring. That kind of covers us for the produce season. Because you're really not making a lot of money on produce season. The markup isn't good enough. There's other reasons too, and you can go into that, but produce season is not really a big money maker anymore. Then by the time you get to Christmas trees, you're hoping that all the Christmas trees you sell, that any profit from that is going to help pay for the bills during the off season, when you're closed because you still have to pay all the bills. 

Antonio Howell  16:37  
Yeah, 

Lisa Wera  16:41  
There's still bills that have to be paid here. And then when he brings the staff back on next month to start planting, then he's got employees to pay, but we're not open. Okay? So there's no money coming in yet, so you're trying to make all your money in May and June to cover you for a whole year's worth of Well, time you make

Chip Malara  17:08  
Well we make money in produce. Just it's not a big markup, you know, but there's more customers coming in and out on a daily basis getting their produce. So we do make fairly good money, but not nothing like beddiing, 

Lisa Wera  17:23  
not like springtime. So

Chip Malara  17:26  
 it floats. It gets us through the rest of the season. 

Lisa Wera  17:30  
So this year, with not selling the Christmas trees that he wanted to sell, oh, now we're kind of in a hole. 

Antonio Howell  17:42  
Yeah, okay, well, I got a question. So like going with that you're kind of in a hole. Well, what keeps you motivated to keep on moving? Just with,

Chip Malara  17:54  
Well, stubbornness, yeah, it's that not giving up, and that's a that's a farmer mentality. You have a bad year, you just gotta go through it and hope for better year next year. That's all

Lisa Wera  18:16  
Well that and I think, you know, we're trying to figure out, alright, what do we need to do different next year? 

Chip Malara  18:24  
Yeah,

Lisa Wera  18:26  
You know, usually at Halloween we close. 

Antonio Howell  18:29  
Yeah, 

Lisa Wera  18:30  
...and open back up right after Thanksgiving. So now we were talking about, well, let's not close, let's just stay open all the way through. We want we might not have very many customers. I don't we don't need very many employees, but we could just stay open and keep selling what produce we can find. 

Antonio Howell  18:47  
okay, 

Lisa Wera  18:48  
...and cut back the number of Christmas trees ordered. So, so we're stubborn, but you also gotta figure out, what are you going to do different so you're not in that same situation next year?

Chip Malara  19:04  
Yeah,

Antonio Howell  19:04  
okay, okay, yeah, um

Lisa Wera  19:09  
Stubborn and stupid would be one thing, but stubborn and trying to learn from it is, is your goal?

Antonio Howell  19:15  
That makes sense? That would make sense. Okay, so, so with that, like, it could be the Christmas, but Christmas trees could have just going back down that. But, like, what's like, the challenging aspect of running your business just all together,

Chip Malara  19:31  
Basically trying to guess what the customer wants, okay, is like in the spring, you know, we, pretty much grow pretty much the same stuff every year, little different here and there, but pretty much same stuff. And because there's, you know, you're limited there you. And what was the question? I forget now, 

Antonio Howell  20:04  
What's the challenging aspect of running Malara gardens?

Chip Malara  20:08  
You have to like you get to the well that it's you gotta kind of guess what you're like in the spring, we have to guess what kind of trees and shrubs 

Antonio Howell  20:26  
Okay 

Chip Malara  20:27  
like that and the perennials we need to guess, basically, as a guess, it's an educated guess from the years past, but still a guess. I mean, you're, you're, you got to look at see what you did last year, and if you did well in certain area, then you beef it up a little bit. If you do bad certain area, kind of slack off a little bit. And then that takes it to every season. I mean, you get into the produce season. That's produce. I like new things. Your Aunt does not like new things. She doesn't like berries. No berries at this place. I like to get them because people want them. But what are you going to do? She don't like them,

Antonio Howell  21:25  
okay

Chip Malara  21:26  
And then you know, so you know, you gotta guess how many out there, how many pumpkins you're going to sell. You know what type? And same with the Christmas trees. You gotta guess. It's an educated guess from years past, but it's still a guess.

Antonio Howell  21:53  
Okay, um, so I got one more question, one more maybe it might be a two part. Uh, so going back a little bit back to the pandemic, what was that like for your business? You had to shut down, wear mask or get away from people. 

Chip Malara  22:09  
This is the best year I had up until then.

Lisa Wera  22:14  
You know when, when they first said it, we thought that nobody was going to have money to buy plants, so we canceled our shrub order, which was, I don't know, five, $6,000 we canceled some orders because we just thought, Well, nobody's going to be working. 

Chip Malara  22:31  
Oh, but we didn't cancel we did.

Lisa Wera  22:34  
We did cancel it. Originally, we canceled it, and then it turned out that gardening was going to be the thing everybody was at home. All they wanted to do was plant their own stuff, take care of their yard, and so garden centers everywhere went through the roof. 

Antonio Howell  22:55  
Okay? 

Lisa Wera  22:55  
So we did.

Chip Malara  22:57  
Some of them didn't. Some of them didn't open in time, right? We did because we sold food, you're right. Oh yeah, we could because we sold food. We could stay open. A lot of places just sold plants and they couldn't stay open government. 

Lisa Wera  23:17  
But no and nobody, nobody came and questioned whether or not we were going to be open or not, but based on the the rules that they were saying whether you are an essential business or not because you had the agriculture listing for your property, I was under the assumption, assumption that if someone was going to question us, we were going to say we were agriculture And we were going to stay open so, 

Antonio Howell  23:40  
okay 

Lisa Wera  23:41  
We got to stay open. We opened in May. We used to be open from nine to six. We opened from eight to seven because we thought that it would help spread the people out, so it wasn't so many people at one time, and that was good, except all it did was mean, we were open from seven to eight, from eight to seven, we were busy. We were swamped. Yeah, people wore their masks. Our employee. We all wore masks as employees, most of the customers wore masks, but most of our stuff is outdoors, so it was easier to maneuver with your mask off. Only once or twice did some people customers get grumpy and say, Well, why aren't you wearing a mask? And heck with them. They they went on their way. But you know, one lady called and said, I need you to, I need to place my order for my seven trays of impatience. And I said, Well, I'll put your order down. But I don't think anybody's going to be buying pansy whatever impatience. I don't think. I don't, I don't. If we're going to sell anything. And she said, Honey, let me tell you, I'm retired. I have plenty of money, and I'm going to spend it, and I think that you better put my name on my flowers, because I think you're going to have, I think you're going to be sold out. And she was right. Most of the clientele are older. They had plenty of money, and they were willing to spend it on all garden things that whole spring.

Antonio Howell  25:32  
Wow. Okay,

Lisa Wera  25:36  
we, we did. His son hooked us up online to do I couldn't do online shopping because I wasn't going to put all the flowers online, but bags of soil, the pies, some things that were easy to put online, he put online, and then they could order it and get curbside pickup. 

Antonio Howell  26:02  
That's cool. 

Lisa Wera  26:03  
We did that. And then a lot, a lot of the older customers who were afraid to come in and shop because of germs or whatever, they would call and say, Could I please have this and this and this and this many tomato plants and this many baskets, and could you get it ready for me? And I'll do curbside pickup. And so we did that for quite a quite a few people.

Antonio Howell  26:25  
That's really cool. 

Lisa Wera  26:26  
Phone. We would charge them, and the girls would take it out to them. So we adjusted, and we did, well,

Antonio Howell  26:36  
okay, yeah, going with that adjustment. Just one last thing here. Do you still do curbside pickup? Do you keep is that still going online shopping? 

Lisa Wera  26:46  
No,

Chip Malara  26:48  
Nobody calls for now, um,

Lisa Wera  26:51  
you know that's not, that's not what we're good at. Yeah, we are better at having people here in the store, talking my employees, talking to the customers and helping them get what they need. Now, sometimes people will call and say, and they'll ask for some special accommodation. I need to get this. Can you have it ready for me? Yeah, but there's no more online purchasing happening? 

Antonio Howell  27:24  
Okay

Lisa Wera  27:26  
It's not.

Speaker 2  27:31  
It's not a big item for us. And I don't feel like making the time or effort to encourage that. I'm not. We're not an online place. You actually have to come here and get want

Antonio Howell  27:44  
you want. No, I I like that about the Malara gardens

Chip Malara  27:49  
Because they have a lot of information they need on certain things. You can't really do it over a lot over it. You know, you need to have people in here that know their stuff and can tell a customer you don't use this. Use this. You know, it's like, if you go to like Home Depot, they don't have anybody there that knows anything about any products. So, you know, it's best to come to a local garden center, because they work outside in the climate that you're in for one thing, and they know what to expect, you know? So it's good to go to a local garden center. 

Antonio Howell  28:41  
Okay,

Well, that wraps it up for me. Thank you so much for sharing. I got a lot of great information. First podcast, this is great. Well, what

Lisa Wera  28:54  
What do you mean? It's your first you haven't talked to anybody else

yet, not yet. They're taking their time. Who else do you gotta get?

Antonio Howell  29:01  
I have a couple, you know, Dino, right? Yeah, yeah. So I got him. I also have Patrick from Silver State foods, and then some of my mom's friends, and then my boss as well, and they're all very swamped, apparently, with lots of work. I told him it takes 15 minutes I just want to get home maybe.

Lisa Wera  29:20  
Are you doing? Gary cocarola, that's

Antonio Howell  29:22  
what I'm gonna I gotta contact him. I haven't contacted him, and then reach out to grandpa too, because I'm gonna get him in there. Oh,

Lisa Wera  29:29  
you just call. You just call them and say I'm ready to do a podcast today. Who? Who's got time today? You just, you get on them, Tony, okay, don't, don't wait for them to you're just going to have to give them some.