Early this holiday season, The New York Times Style Section got in touch with Fruit and Flower Shop with a time sensitive request: a photo was needed of the Cereria Introna Fennel Candle as they were hoping to feature it in their upcoming Holiday Gift Guide.

After A ‘Plant-Based’ Gift Guide debuted, Fruit and Flower Shop was absolutely flooded with orders, setting record sales.

Simultaneously, The Style Section decided to gift their entire staff candles from Cereria Introna, putting us in a tricky position to get restocked quickly enough to send gifts and also to meet the need of Times' readers. With some quick stepping from the kind folks at Cereria Introna in Bari, Italy, we managed to get a couple hundred candles in the air to Pittsburgh within the second week of December.

Another write up in the Times, Fake Food is Trendy Again, made mention of Fruit and Flower Shop, which was truly a surreal moment: to see the shop mentioned alongside the words of John Derian was quite a milestone.

With so much buzz generated with the write up and the task of prepping gifts for NYT Style staff, the holiday season was such a whirlwind! It was truly the season of fennel- that wondrous, bulbous vegetable that made Fruit and Flower Shop’s Holiday season one to remember!

December 2021

For the Love of Fennel!