Bryan’s Florist’s deep roots in Northwest Indiana stretch back 70 years
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PostedOctober 8, 2019
A crowd gathered at the Bryan’s Florist in Hobart this weekend to celebrate the business’s 70th anniversary in Northwest Indiana. When Ray Bryan was working at Inland Steel in East Chicago at 18 years old, his colleagues pointed out that he lived across from three cemeteries — Ridgelawn, Mt. Mercy and St. Mary’s Russian Orthodox — and there was nowhere nearby to buy flowers. Seeing the opportunity, Bryan asked his father if he could buy a vacant lot with his college savings. In 1949, at the age of 19, Bryan opened his first flower shop at 4238 W. Ridge Road. Bryan’s Florist and Greenhouse grew to having as many as 10 locations and 50 employees across Northwest Indiana. The Region institution just celebrated its 70th anniversary serving Region residents at important moments in their lives: weddings, funerals, anniversaries, birthdays, bouts of illness, high school dances and Valentine’s Days. “She was hysterical because I was her only son,” said Bryan, who’s now 89 years old. “She would leave my clothes laying around the house to pretend I was still home. She took care of the business and kept it running when I was gone. When I got back she gave me the bank book and said, ‘here’s the money, now you need to get a greenhouse.'” In the beginning, Ray Bryan drove the delivery truck himself, employing a single designer and cashier at the shop on Ridge Road in Gary. He eventually bought out other floral shops across Northwest Indiana, but expanded mainly through franchising and training franchisees, like the original Hobart shop owner who was laid off from a steel mill after 20 years and was uncertain and despondent about what he’d do next. Known across the Region, Bryan’s Florist and Greenhouse once had billboards on the Borman Expressway and routinely took out full-page newspaper ads with Ray Bryan’s kids saying they buy all their flowers from daddy. He ended up employing dozens of people, many of whom went on to open their own floral shops across Northwest Indiana. The floral business evolved considerably over time. The flowers once […]
