You might say Amy Rivera has spent her whole life in the family business, now named Swan St. Florist.
“Mom would bring me to work there and put me in a bassinet,” she said. “She took over the business from my grandfather, who had run it as a grocery store, as had my great-grandfather before him. But, overnight, Mom changed it from food to flowers … and that’s what it is today.
“Even as a youngster, I loved flowers and bring creative,” she said. “Mom always said I could run a glue gun at the age of 5. I really love working with flowers and the creativity it affords me.”
Though she inherited what was a grocery store, her mom was looking for a different line of business.
“Mom’s inspiration to go into flowers came when she was looking at a beer cooler in the store, and thought, ‘What could I do?’ And her answer was flowers … that was 36 years ago.”