Food gift sets worldwide: a thank-you you can eat, sent with flowers
In Japan thank-you gifts go out twice a year: ochugen from late June to mid-July, oseibo in the first three weeks of December, sent to parents, relatives, friends, bosses and teachers, usually as food — jelly in summer, ham in winter. Food gift sets worldwide answer the same question in a different place, and the choice still starts with the person and the occasion, since a food gift set travels in one order together with a bouquet.
Why food makes a thank-you gift, and who it suits
A food gift reaches people a bouquet alone might not quite suit, from parents and relatives to friends, bosses and teachers, because it is something eaten rather than displayed. Some Japanese companies rule out gifts between colleagues and managers altogether, and a gift to a government official can be read as a bribe, so it is worth checking a workplace's own rules before sending anything there.
An office-appropriate version of the same idea exists elsewhere too. Administrative Professionals' Day, marked on the Wednesday of the last full week of April in the United States and Canada, pairs a card with flowers, chocolate or a meal as a matter of course. Food beside flowers, not instead of them, is the pattern a food gift set follows here as well.
Every bouquet here is put together to order, and a food gift set is added at checkout the same way as sweets, balloons, a soft toy or a vase; a card with a written message costs nothing extra. One order can carry several bouquets to different addresses, with delivery worked out separately for each address.
The courier is told only a name and an address, nothing more. A card can be signed or left blank, so the gift can arrive without saying who sent it, and a phone number is enough where there is no address at all; an office needs the company name and the floor instead. Before the courier leaves, a photo of the finished bouquet goes to the sender's phone.
Most orders reach the recipient on the day they are placed, and the delivery slot for any bouquet is shown on its own page rather than promised upfront — details are on the Delivery page. Payment runs through Visa or Mastercard, and the total in the basket is final.
Keeping the food and the flowers once they arrive
If the set includes chocolate, a pale bloom after a warm afternoon is not spoilage: cocoa butter melts at 34–38°C, just under body temperature, and simply sets again with a slightly different texture. Anything perishable in the set, cream or a milk filling, is best not left at room temperature for more than two hours, or one hour once the room passes 32°C.
The bouquet needs its own care. Keep the vase away from ripening fruit, which gives off ethylene, and away from radiators and direct sun, recut the stems at an angle and change the water every day or two. Among the bouquets sold here, a spray chrysanthemum bouquet or a chrysanthemum bouquet in a vase lasts two to three weeks, a rose around a week.
Where to start is easier by category than by guesswork: gifts to go with bouquets lists everything that pairs with flowers, gift baskets hold the sweets and extras together, and strawberries work as a food gift on their own.
