Making Chicago’s First Flower Truck

Drawing, measuring, rendering, redrawing, cutting, and hand-painting every little corner, our flower truck went through an enormous planning process to become the awesome Flowers for Dreams vehicle you see roaming the streets of Chicago. We wanted show you a little peek of that process and how a little vintage ice cream truck became Chicago’s first flower shop on wheels.

We started by meeting with Fritz, founder and owner of OutCold, a marketing agency specializing in outdoor and guerrilla marketing. He gave us a tour of their office and garage filled with a plethora of vintage vehicles. Fritz only seeks out and hand picks the most unique vehicles from all across the country, and their garage shows off each and every one.

Photo by OutCold

Our first hurdle was figuring out what we wanted out of our truck and how to make it so it could be versatile. After a lot of brainstorming, Fritz suggested his vintage ice cream truck that showed a lot of promise: it was large enough to house a flower cooler, easy to drive, and already had service windows built in. Not to mention, it was super cute. From there, the fun part of designing the truck started.

After the first couple collections of drawing, renderings, and inspiration photos, it was clear we were all on the same page and could move toward fine tuning the design. Fritz and the OutCold team we so helpful letting us know what was possible with the truck and finding solutions to some of our crazy ideas, ideas like adding wood elements onto the truck to give it more warmth or figuring out how to attach a bike while still being able to access the motor. Once we submitted the interior renderings, the OutCold crew got straight to work in outfitting the truck to be a mini floral studio.

Inspiration photos for truck interior

Then came the truck’s wrap. OutCold suggested one large wrap with a matte finish and then having the smaller elements be die-cut and stuck onto the truck to give more dimension. After the truck was wrapped, Fritz’s team hand-painted every tine corner and crack to fill in an spots. It is unreal how much care was put into this (and most of it was done in house!)

We could not have been happier with how the truck turned out; every time we see it, we fall in love with it all over again. Even more so, we love seeing how our fans interact with the truck. So look out for it around town, stop by and say hi, grab some flowers, and hang. It will be out all summer long.