Valentine's Day Business Put On Ice By Winter Weather

Valentine's day is normally big business for local restaurants and flower shops, but icy roads and freezing weather could slow down sales this year.

The manager of Oren Restaurant in Tulsa said Valentine's day is one of the biggest days of the year for his business. But icy weather is cooling down what is normally a hot day for business.

Owner Matt Amberg said icy roads in Tulsa are slowing down traffic and business.

"Since this fell on a weekend it was potentially really important for us," said Amberg.

Amberg said that he is seeing a lot of weather-related cancellations, but Mary Murray's Flowers in Tulsa has a rosier outlook.

Owner Nikki Argo said this year has been one of their best, but this weekend's weather put some of that momentum on ice.

"We couldn't do our timed deliveries this year because of the weather," Argo said.

Argo said they were forced to trim orders and deliveries significantly.

"Yesterday they were able to do about half of what they normally do. The flowers won't last outside in this weather," Argo said.

"So they had to go to the door, go back and get the flowers, let the customer go in the door," Argo said. "So it's this kind of musical chairs kind of thing going back and forth. So every delivery takes quite a bit longer to do."

But both businesses are far from wilting in the cold, it has just made a normally hot day more lukewarm.

"We're getting a lot of cancellations, but as many cancellations we get, we get more people requesting," Amberg said.

Argo's flower delivery team is racing to beat the storm.

"Any deliveries that we did have scheduled out for Sunday, we're going to try and get them out today because we don't want to miss it," she said.

No matter what you end up doing, both businesses encourage you to shop local this Valentine's day.