New St. Pete company delivers gourmet meals … instead of flowers

To paraphrase the old Hallmark slogan, when you care enough to send the very best, send something instead of flowers. Something unique.

That’s been Micah Serwitz’s mantra since 1999. The Atlanta-based chef, caterer and businessman is the president of Instead of Flowers, Inc., which provides custom-prepared three-course gourmet meals – salad, entrée, vegetable, starch, dessert, the whole package – for delivery.

Instead of Flowers is used for anniversaries, birthdays, get-well-soons and more. New mothers, Serwitz says, are among his biggest recipients. “It’s for when they come home from the hospital and people are like ‘What can I do for you?’ They don’t need casseroles stacked up in the freezer. They just hand them the gift certificate from Instead of Flowers and say ‘Order this at your leisure. When you’re ready for it.’”

Serwitz has just opened his second location, in St. Petersburg. Although it’s equipped for local pickup orders, it’s not really a storefront. Nor is it a restaurant; it’s an office and a (big) kitchen.

The prepared food is delivered – in temperature-controlled containers – via courier to Pinellas, Hillsborough, Pasco, Manatee or Sarasota counties. They use FedEx, too, should you want to send some Shrimp Scampi or Seared Salmon to New York or New Mexico.

“We are not Blue Apron, Hello Fresh or any of those companies out there,” Serwitz insists. “First of all, we’ve been around way longer than any of them. Secondly, we don’t send raw products to people’s homes with a recipe card and say ‘Here – prepare this.’ We don’t send frozen food to people and say ‘Boil this in a bag.’”

The meals are fully cooked and just require a bit of heating. There are also vegetarian, gluten-free and kids’ meals on the menu. “I can’t think of anyone, really, who does what we do, and does it the way we do it.”

In its 19 years in business, the Atlanta flagship has proved wildly successful. Serwitz and his crew cook and deliver for dozens of corporate clients; in fact, he says, the business is now split about 50/50 between private and corporate purchasers.

He’s hoping to get the same action down here.

“I wanted to prove proof of concept, and make sure that the systems we have in place could be duplicated someplace else,” he explains. “I needed to go outside of Georgia, and I needed to have a city that was demographically similar. I didn’t find Charlotte or Birmingham to be big enough.

Serwitz says he’s a big fan of Florida, and Tampa Bay in particular. “The St. Pete/Tampa area seemed to hit all of the buttons for me. I’m not saying that a Fort Lauderdale wouldn’t have done the same – possibly we’ll look at an east coast location as well, down the road.”

After consulting with J.P. DuBuque and the Pinellas Economic Development Corporation, Serwitz embraced St. Pete’s growth potential, its dynamic corporate profile, then scouted and secured the vacant former home of Chris’ Kitchen and Deli – at 1100 94^th Ave. N.

He’d been thinking for a long time about expanding. Some day, he wants to take Instead of Flowers to the western United States, too.

Franchising – his first choice – proved unfeasible. “Food franchises that are successful – your Five Guys, your Subway, your McDonald’s – are usually chip, sandwich, drink or burger, fry, shake. Or variations thereof.

“We braise, poach, grill, sautee, roast … I can’t teach somebody to be a chef in a 2-3 week training period, then pat them on the butt and say ‘Here you go – you’re on your own!’ So I eighty-sixed the franchise idea.”

Serwitz also looked into bringing in professional chefs as business partners. “A lot of the chefs wanted to do their own menus,” he explains. “’Why do I have to follow your recipes?’ I guess they didn’t understand that the system works; you follow the recipe. Or they loved the idea and the concept, but they didn’t have the money that was needed to invest.”

And that led him to St. Petersburg, where he’s hired a gourmet chef, and a small staff and has been “boots on the ground” and fully focused since Instead of Flowers’ April 1 opening. The word is getting around.

“Over the past 19 years,” Serwitz says, “I’ve sold my catering company and focused 100 percent of my efforts and time on Instead of Flowers. We’ve grown by leaps and bounds in Atlanta. And we’re loved so much by our customers in Atlanta, the reviews are uniformly great. So I thought ‘Why can’t there be one in every major city? Let me see what I can do.’”