KANSAS CITY, Mo. — As Kansas City prepares for its third Super Bowl parade in five years, local businesses are already working twice as hard to get things ready. Many businesses, though, are also preparing for Valentine’s Day, which falls on the same day as the Chiefs Champions Victory Parade this year.
This year’s parade starts at 11 a.m. in downtown Kansas City, Missouri, and is expected to last about 90 minutes. At roughly 12:45 p.m., there will be a rally on the north lawn of the National World War I Museum and Memorial outside the front of Union Station. It starts at Grand Blvd and 6th Street and will end at Union Station.
Schmidt & Klaus is a wholesale flower shop right on the parade route. They supply flowers, plants, supplies and gifts to hundreds of local retail stores in and around Kansas City.
"Valentine's Day is definitely the biggest holiday for our company," Director of Operations Peggy Haley said. “Just a lot of preparation. This is what we do, this is what we’re here for. We work 12-hour days, we’ve been working for 18 days straight in a row. We work the weekends, we unload large semi-trucks of flowers, it’s just a lot of mental and physical work.”
Schmidt & Klaus will have to close for the parade since completing deliveries while being on the parade route is impossible.
Haley said they're working with up to thousands of shipments per day as they’re in the home stretch for the holiday.
“Especially with a parade on Valentine’s Day for the Kansas City Chiefs, we definitely want them (our retailers) to have everything they need by tomorrow," she said.
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