Contact-free delivery has always been the domain of florists, the experts in “door dash” before it was an app. This pandemic provides an opportunity to both build on that experience and tweak it to accommodate the landscape of package-filled doorsteps.

Here are some ideas to consider for your operations:

Make Confirmations Standard Operating Procedures

In this time of anxiety and social distancing, taking the extra step to confirm delivery with senders and recipients (via automated technology or personal outreach) is an important special touch. In Little Rock, Arkansas, Tipton & Hurst has trained its drivers to call ahead to recipients, but they also call the senders. (After Mother’s Day, they made at least 3,500 calls.) “I’m concerned that our society is so accustomed to Amazon deliveries they’re not answering the door, and things just sit,” said Christopher Norwood, AIFD, PFCI, adding that he worried as much about weather as porch theft. “We have to be better than that.”

When drivers’ calls go to voicemail at Penny’s by Plaza Flowers, the customer gets an email confirmation and a call to inform them of their gifts’ arrival and location. Thanks to a moderate spring in Pennsylvania, flowers on porches have fared well, but SAF President Chris Drummond, AAF, PFCI, said that high summer temperatures could require moving to “Plan B — calling ahead and scheduling.”

Build in Flexibility

One upside for florists of a mostly work-for-home population is the temporary end of timed deliveries. At J. Miller Flowers in Oakland, California, sales staff ask what day (not time) customers want their flowers to arrive, giving them more flexibility to manage their routes and team. Most customers, particularly in hard-hit areas of the country, are understanding. (To build on that goodwill, Valerie Ow added a flyer with each J. Miller delivery thanking customers for supporting a small local business and emphasizing the power of flowers to calm and connect.)

Limit In-Person Interactions

Be sure to train your drivers to observe social distancing protocols during drop-offs. “We just tell them to keep their masks and gloves on, ring the doorbell and step back to their vehicles,” said Rakini Chinery, AAF, AzMF, of Allan’s Flowers in Prescott, Arizona. If no one comes out after a knock, drivers call. She also has equipped drivers with gloves her UPS driver recommended.

Florists are experimenting with other ways to reduce interactions among delivery and design staff, too. In Oakland, drivers from J. Miller’s pull into a breezeway and take orders from a table, where a designer left them. At Lake Forest Flowers, drivers call when they arrive, and a staff member runs out the orders.

Thanks to refrigerated buildings on the property at Penny’s by Plaza Flowers, no driver entered the building for Mother’s Day. Drummond has extended wireless service to buildings, so staff can scan packages as they go into vehicles. Inside, delivery packers know not to cross a bright yellow strip of duct tape on the floor that separates them from drivers’ space. If drivers need to use the restroom inside, they have their own separate one. “It’s strange, but it’s working,” Drummond said.

Master the Curbside Shuffle

Florists turned their parking lots and sidewalks into floral pickup stations during the Mother’s Day rush, blocking off six-foot spaces on the sidewalk in the lot to encourage customers to wait their turn to approach the product and/or pick-up a pre-ordered package. And they got their first taste of their new role as hall monitor/high school dance chaperone, gently nudging customers to keep a safe distance. “I did have to tell some customers to put on their masks — and to go stand in their square,” Ow said. “It’s new for me, being this enforcer, but if you want us to remain open and safe, we all need to follow the guidelines.”

Customers at Penny’s by Plaza Flowers can keep their distance on the sidewalks outside both locations, where they browse rows of plants and arrangements available for sale 24 hours a day. They don’t even have to see a single employee. Just put money in an envelope, slide it through the glass double doors, and the sale is complete. Customers without cash can call the number on the sign and provide their credit card number. “Our unique honor system has taken off,” Drummond said. The scant amount of theft hasn’t rivaled the cost of paying an employee, he said. Aside from one fat envelope too full of change to fit through the slot, the system is working “extremely well,” he said.

Amanda Long is a freelance writer and editor in Falls Church, Virginia, and a former managing editor of Floral Management.