Blossom Business

Andrina "Andi" Barefoot is the sole owner and operator of the BG Bloom Room, a recently opened Bouquet Shop in Bowling Green. ​​​​​​​

Andi is currently in the rebranding and relaunching stage of the flower shop embedded in Bowling Green’s history. The shop has been around since 1949 and has passed through 3 families’ hands. Andi is the latest to receive the shop, and has turned it into a more modern approach to the bouquet and flower business.

Andi Barefoot, owner of BG Bloom Room, looks for flowers to use in an arrangement in the outgoing orders that are waiting to be delivered on Valentine's Day, 2025. “We’re out of baby’s breath!” Andi said to her family. Grace Maxfield, Andi's friend, left to go to the wholesale to get more flowers for the shop to use.

 "Everything I have is because of my family."
- Andi Barefoot

Andi Barefoot talks to Grace Maxfield as she prepares for the incoming orders for Valentine’s Day on Tuesday, Feb. 11, 2025. Andi made the decision to rebrand the shop a month before Valentine’s Day. “We completely redid the inside. We changed the name,” Andi said. “The only thing that stayed the same was the website and the phone number.” 

25-year-old Andi owns and operates the BG Bloom Room, an up-and-coming flower shop. Andi has always been an entrepreneur and has made money in many ways growing up. Her parents bought the bouquet shop when she was in high school, and gave her an opportunity to run it. 
“I ran it from the time I was 16 till I was 18. And then my parents were like, ‘you know what? We think you should also get an education and not just flowers’.” Andi said. 
“They [my parents] sent me through floral design school and I got my floral design certificate. Then they were like, ‘but you also need something else.’ I went to nursing school, and I got so busy with nursing that I didn't work at the shop for the last seven years. We had someone else running it, so that's kind of how I got my feet in it.”

Andi laughs to Grace about being on the local news days before Valentine’s Day. The local news station had interviewed the Bloom Room as a feature story for the Valentine's Day season. Andi held Grace’s newborn while Grace was taking a break from arranging orders. "They called me asking to have an interview the same day," Andi said. "I literally ran home to put on makeup and get ready for the interview." 

The previous manager of the shop left when Andi bought the shop. Andi had to start the business over since her purchase, so she does not have any employees. "We're just a tiny little fish, but that's kind of how we want to be." Andi said. "We want to keep it small and and keep it personal." Andi often hires on her family friends and relatives when help is needed. 

Andi’s brother, Jack, sits in the cluttered and humid Bouquet Shop on the night before Valentine’s Day. Andi hired her family to help her in fulfill and arranging 200 orders for Valentine’s Day. “I have a few friends that help out here.” Andi said.

Even though the shop recently opened in January 2025, Andi has seen sales spike during the holidays of the year. She has also seen the shop vandalized and broke into. “We had a person vandalize the shop. We had tons of orders get damaged." Andi said.

Discarded flower stalks cover the floor as Gracie Sutton trims flower stalks to arrange them in vases on the night before Valentine’s Day. Sutton helped the family fill the 200 orders.

"We were days behind. Knowing that people who were expecting flowers for their loved ones weren't going to get them was so hard.”
- Andi Barefoot

Andi’s family and friends lend their hands to Andi’s aid the night before Valentine’s Day. “There's plenty of times in the flower business that were scary,” Andi said. “Valentine’s Day was the most challenging."

The BG Bloom Room bustled with activity as orders flowed through on Valentine’s Day 2025. The shop fully opened as Andi and her family delivered orders and helped customers who came into the shop. “We didn’t get out of the shop until 2 a.m.” Andi said. “We got right back to it the next day at 8 to work on the orders that came in same-day.” 

“It wasn't even really the financial aspect of it. It was just the emotions of like, man, I hate letting people down. And even though it wasn't really our fault, it still really sucked. So that was definitely the hardest thing we've had to go through.” Andi said. Andi acknowledged that although those events happened, fear won’t stop her from working for the holidays. 

Andi glues a flower tip to a corsage for a prom order. Prom is a big season for Andi. She gets a lot of orders for corsages and flowers for prom dates and couples. 

Andi deals with more struggles than just the flower shop. Andi raises her one year old son, Myles, by herself after leaving her husband in a divorce. She has found the divorce process messy in the two years since her departure. Her husband has not made the process easy for her, rendering her unable to finalize custody of her child until the court date planned for September.

Andi sits on her back patio after coming home from the shop on Monday, April 28, 2025. Myles watches Nick Troutt, Andi's boyfriend, scrub his car in the backyard.

“There's no point in giving up. You have to keep going once you're a parent.” 
- Andi Barefoot

Andi walks with Myles down the driveway behind her house. “My biggest goal in motherhood was to make sure he always felt secure, and that he had that security, that I always love him no matter what,” Andi said. “Even as tiny as he is, I already see it every day. It's the way he looks at me first thing in the morning, and it's the way he comes to me right before bed. Like it literally is true love. And I love that.”

Andi looks for slugs on her stairs as the collective heads inside for dinner on Monday, April 28, 2025. “My favorite snail got crushed,” Andi said. “Someone must have stepped on it!”

Andi and Myles take a moment to drink as Nick prepares to grill steak for the family's dinner on Monday, April 28, 2025. 

"I always kind of just felt like if someone said they loved you, that was it. And if they loved you, that was enough," Andi said. “I've really recently learned again through seeing my parents just pour their love into me when I was going through the hardest time of my life and then through Miles, me kind of doing the same thing to him, pouring my love into him and the way Nick has loved me through things that weren't his fault or his responsibility.” 

The group prepares for the dinner that Nick had made. Andi and Nick began to date a year after her split with her husband. “Nick has made it so calm and so normal, and made it feel like so much like home,” Andi said. “I was able to open up in that way, way sooner than I expected it myself to be able to.” 

"I really got to see. Wow, like love is so much more than that. It's devotion. It's dedication. It's putting the work in," Andi said. "It's being there when it's hard and when you don't want to. It's so many things, and I've really got to feel the impact of learning about that."

Myles crawls upstairs to the attic to join his mother and Gracie as they hang out in Myle’s play area. Andi joked with Gracie about Gracie’s plan to move in. “Gracie, you still don’t want to move up here?” Andi said.

"I feel ten times more loved than I ever have in my entire life, because I'm really feeling the effects of every aspect of love and not just the good stuff."
- Andi Barefoot
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