Sharing the Work of Vault + Vine

by Alyssa Rainville

Unless you work at Vault + Vine, there are things about how we operate that you would have no way of truly knowing.  You wouldn’t know about what wonderful team efforts happen in our production space when there are seven weddings in one weekend.  You wouldn’t know how diligently the schedules for Café and Retail shifts are written, in the spirit of honoring everyone’s needs for work/life balance.  We’ve all actively created the current iteration of Vault + Vine, which is forever changing and molding as our staff works together.  Our team helps Vault + Vine grow and morph every day.

To truly honor our growth, an entire blog post devoted to our story is necessary – trust that one blog post would barely scratch the surface of our evolution!  Until right now, you probably didn’t know that Vault + Vine is a small business with thirty people (30!) on the payroll.  We have exponentially grown, from even just three years ago, when there were only four people on staff at our smaller location on Conrad Street, under our old name, Falls Flowers.  We’ve expanded into our current building with new departments, new operations, and new challenges.

There is a respite our shop creates for the community that momentarily stuns people when they visit.  From our spot, standing behind the Retail counter, we easily notice the familiar look on the face of someone who has walked through the doors for the first time. 

After walking through the door, they only take one or two steps inside, and they stop in their tracks.  Heads turn up, eyes glance around, and for a moment, they don’t hear the greeting of our Retail staff – they’re just taking in their surroundings.  They breathe in and out, and then – eyes focus, they’ve snapped out of the momentary stupor, and begin getting to know what we have to share.

We have carefully created a shop that provides a respite to our customers, and in doing so, have created the illusion that the work we do is perhaps more graceful than it truly is.

How can we peel back the curtain a bit on Vault + Vine?  How can we be more candid and still wrap you in the magic of what we create?   To start, we’ll try to share what we’ve never shared before, and we hope you ask us about what you cannot see.