Firefighting florist moves family business
Dean’s Flowers
to relocate to former site of uncle’s practice
JERRY WOLKOWITZ Tom Doremus, owner of Dean’s Flowers in Red Bank, and his wife, Debbi, examine lilies sold in the store. Doremus is moving the business from 130 Broad St. to 15-17 Monmouth St. Doremus is hoping the new location will attract more customers.
RED BANK — It’s just a few blocks from the spot Dean’s Flowers now occupies on Broad Street in Red Bank to the building on Monmouth Street where the flower shop will move this spring, but for Tom Doremus, it’s a step back in time.
"We’re kind of going back to our roots," Doremus observed. "It was the site of a family business, and I’m buying it from family members."
Doremus and his nephew, Charles Percy Doremus, owner of the Red Bank Call Center, are in the process of purchasing 15-17 Monmouth St., a two-story circa 1910 building near the intersection of Broad Street, from their cousins.
"My uncle Theodore Doremus was a dentist and had his office in that building. I remember sitting in his chair in that building while he worked on my teeth," Doremus recounted.
Dean’s Flowers will occupy the 900-square-foot retail space currently occupied by Backward Glances, a vintage clothing store, which is moving to Broad Street. The building also houses a salon and upstairs offices.
The move from 130 Broad, explained Doremus, who recently completed his second term as chief of Independent Fire Company, has been in the works for a while.
"It’s something we’ve been thinking about for years," he said. "Red Bank has changed drastically. The trend is that our end of town gets forgotten. There’s nothing down here to draw people; everything stops at St. James (Church)."
Purchasing the building is also a way to cope with the rising rents in the downtown, Doremus said, since Dean’s will scale down from the 2,500-square-foot leased space to a smaller space in a building he will co-own.
In its new location, Dean’s Flowers will benefit from the foot traffic on Monmouth Street, and Doremus plans some changes in response to the quickened pace of customers’ lives.
"I hope to do a lot more cash-and-carry," he said, "to have more mixed flowers that people can put together themselves and ready-to-go bouquets. Nowadays, everything is based on convenience."
The new flower shop he envisions will be more open, with pots of flowers set out so that patrons can touch and smell them and give in to the impulse to bring some home.
The changes will hopefully position the flower shop to compete with the proliferation of outlets where people can buy flowers — often at a discount — including supermarkets, gas stations and even roadside stands, according to Doremus.
"The supermarkets took a lot of the holiday trade," he noted. "We used to sell 150 to 200 Easter lilies, and now we sell about 25."
While those competing businesses have siphoned off some of the florist trade, they cannot lay claim to the relationship Dean’s has with customers, said the fourth-generation firefighter.
"The thing I like most about this business is that Mrs. Dean (the business’ founder) did their grandmothers’ and grandfathers’ weddings, my brother did their mothers’ and fathers’ and I’m doing the children’s," he observed. "That’s three to four generations of people we’ve served over the years. You share their good times like birthdays and, unfortunately, share their sad times too. It’s part of the business.
"When all is said and done," he continued, "what separates us from everybody else is how we do business — how we handle our customers."
The move to Monmouth Street will be the second one engineered by Doremus, who began working at the flower shop when he was in eighth grade.
His brother, Charles, and sister, Marilyn, already worked at the flower shop, which was founded in Little Silver in 1897 by Mrs. Hortense Dean. Charles bought the business in the early 1960s and operated it until Tom purchased Dean’s in 1976 and moved it to Red Bank, across the street from its present location.
"My brother had a very good clientele, and he did many of the large affairs in the area, but that business dropped off with the times," explained Doremus. "I thought there was more opportunity in Red Bank because the hospital and several funeral homes were here. There seemed to be more potential."
Among the changes the move to Red Bank made possible was the opportunity for Doremus to integrate his business with his strong ties to the community where his family had settled generations earlier.
Members of the Doremus family were prominent in Red Bank’s business community as far back as the turn of the century when Doremus Brothers Market was located on Broad Street, he explained.
"One of the biggest things I was able to accomplish was getting a little bit more community involved," he said.
A fourth-generation firefighter, Doremus often leaves the shop to answer fire alarms, explained his wife, Debbie, a member of the borough’s first aid squad, who helps out at Dean’s along with sons Thomas, 18, and Taylor, 10.
"It’s always been a family business," Doremus added, noting that his father started to work at Dean’s when he retired.
William Albert Doremus, his son recalled, was widely known as "Mr. Red Bank" because of his ties to the community, where he served the fire department as chaplain.
"He was a big part of this town, and he came to work for me when he retired around 1977," Doremus said. "The problem was that when you sent him out on a delivery, he would be there all day because he knew everybody."
When Doremus’ father died in 1990 at the age of 80, he just missed Dean’s move to the other side of Broad Street, though he may be the inspiration for the upcoming change of address.
"I think he’s got a lot to do with me pushing to go to Monmouth Street," Doremus acknowledged. "The building has a lot of memories for me. It’s nice to move to a building where your family worked and where you were when you were younger. I’m very proud of my heritage."