Who, then, would dream of competing with the mainstay of positive gestures and sentiments?
At least that’s what experts asked Tariq Farid, then a flower shop owner, when he pitched them the idea behind Edible Arrangements in 1999.
Farid, who had begun toying with flower-shaped cutters and pineapple slices, was told to “stick with flowers, that I was wasting my time and my money on fruit bouquets,” he explains to Business Insider.
But when he first took an arrangement home and put it on the table, his mother told him, “This is going to be great.” That’s all the encouragement he needed to begin his new venture.
