Farmington Edible Arrangements Owner Leads Community Outreach

Vikki Hardy Brown, owner of Edible Arrangements in Farmington, is serving as a leader and role model for her company’s efforts to encourage community involvement.

Edible Arrangements, which creates fresh-fruit bouquets, has launched a national initiative, "Random Acts of Happiness," with the goal of recognizing those who go out of their way to bring joy to others and their communities.

In addition, the corporation is encouraging all of its stores to get involved in their own communities, something Brown and other Detroit area Edible Arrangements owners have been doing for years.

“When corporate came to us and said they wanted to do this Random Acts of Happiness initiative my thought was, ‘Cool! We do that every day around here',” said Brown, the president of a co-op formed by the 15 Edible Arrangements Detroit-area locations.

In Farmington, Brown and her store have taken part in Military Appreciation Day, the Founders Festival Parade and the summer reading program. Brown has also spearheaded Detroit-area projects, such as the co-op’s donating of unused fruit to Forgotten Harvest's food bank, as well as volunteering at Earthworks Farm, an urban garden connected with the Capuchin Soup Kitchen.

Brown, who has owned her store since 2006, said she and her colleagues remain motivated to volunteer because they feel the need to repay the community for supporting their businesses even during difficult economic times.

“We were brand new to the market and our sales were climbing year, over year, over year,” Brown said. “This is in a market where the rest of the country thinks we’ve got one foot in the grave, so to see a franchise like this grow and grow made us feel the need to say ‘Thank you’, because we know how hard-earned those dollars were.”

Now that Edible Arrangements is getting all of its stores involved in their respective communities, the Detroit-area stores are serving as the model for the company’s outreach.

“Corporate has asked us to be the demo, if you will,” Brown said. “They chose the Detroit co-op as the example because we have been doing community work for so long.”

With a national convention for Edible Arrangements owners coming this month, a camera crew has captured some of Brown and her partners’ recent outreach events to show the rest of the store owners.

Edible Arrangements is encouraging people all over the country to share stories about people or groups doing Random Acts of Happiness on actsofhappiness.com.  In addition, people in the metro Detroit area can nominate a person or group they think deserves a reward for community work on the Edible Arrangements Metro Detroit Group Facebook page. The people or groups that are selected locally will receive fresh-fruit bouquets.