29-year-old woman quits job to sell flowers from van, now earns up to $16,000 a month

In 2020, at the age of 24, she went freelance and created her own digital marketing agency. In September 2022, she moved to Los Angeles while running her agency from her apartment, but she still wanted something more.

“I had kind of lost my sense of what I was doing,” she tells CNBC Make It. “I had moved to Los Angeles and something wasn’t working. I had changed everything in my life except my agency.”

That sense of anxiety led her to talk to her therapist, who advised her to make a list of what she wanted in her ideal job. Hintze said she wanted to work with her hands, be outdoors interacting with people, and would love to own an old pickup truck.

About a week later, she had the idea to start her own flower truck business, Main Street Flower Truck.

Since its launch in August 2023, the company generated about $44,000 in revenue, plus an additional $4,500 in cash, Hintze estimates.

In May 2024, the 29-year-old’s business brought in about $16,000 that month alone.

“If you live happily, money will follow,” she said.

Hintze grew up on Long Island, New York, and his father drove to his job as a firefighter in a van. His mother worked many different jobs, but her love of gardening was a mainstay, Hintze says, so the vehicle and the bouquets were familiar to her.

“When I was little, the whole garden was in bloom,” Hintze says. “And one of my favorite memories with my dad was riding around in his little van.”

She decided to name her business after the street she grew up on, Main Street. But before she could move forward, she needed to secure one key piece: the vehicle.

Since she was still running her digital marketing agency full-time, she had only looked at and tested a few potential trucks. Eventually, by accident, she came across the perfect person.

When her parents came to visit her and her sister in Los Angeles last May, they decided to drive to Ojai, a small town in Ventura County about two hours outside the city. Driving down a back road, she spotted a green van with a “for sale” sign on the window that looked like the one she drove in high school.

“It seemed completely normal,” she said.

After the family stopped to inspect the truck, Hintze wrote down the number on the “for sale” sign. She called the owner that same day to ask if she could test drive it. The seller agreed and told her she had just replaced the engine and transmission.

“I put my hands on the hood of the truck and had this thought to the universe saying, ‘Please, if this is going to happen, let me know.’”

The universe kept its promises: the owner told Hintze that the truck’s name was “Fiona.”

“My name is Vienna, and every time I introduced myself to someone in Los Angeles, in Los Angeles alone, they all asked me if I just said ‘Fiona,’” she says. “So that was a sign to me that I absolutely had to buy this truck.”

Two weeks later, she bought Fiona for about $10,000 using money from her personal savings. Although she was worried about whether the flower truck would succeed, she was confident in her ability to run her own business.

“Even though I was scared to start the flower truck, I already knew I was an all-or-nothing type of person in whatever I did,” she says. “I was going to give it 100 percent and do whatever it took to make it work.”

In August, Hintze started selling flowers from her pickup truck while also running her digital marketing agency. But as business from her flower truck started to pick up, it became harder for her to clock in for her marketing work.

“It was like pulling teeth to get me to log in every day,” she says.

She knew she had to make a decision: should she focus full-time on running the flower truck or on her marketing agency? In February, she decided to dedicate all of her time and energy to growing her flower truck business.

Hintze decided to put his advertising and social media marketing skills to work for his own brand and saw the results of his efforts pay off a few months later in April.

“Some of the content started going viral, which was amazing because for the first time I was marketing my own brand and it was the most authentic thing I’ve ever done,” she says.

That’s not to say Hintze hasn’t encountered unexpected challenges. Because she spends thousands of dollars on flowers, she’s used trial and error to figure out what price she should charge to make her business profitable, for example.

“The first pop-up sale, I was selling huge bouquets for $7 and I just proved to myself that people would buy those bouquets and keep buying them,” she says. “I definitely lost money that day, but that’s OK.”

His flower truck business makes money in three ways, Hintze explains: through pop-up events, corporate bookings and video shoots.

At pop-up events, she drives her truck full of freshly picked flowers that she has arranged into bouquets at various locations around Los Angeles. She sells them for $10 for a mini bouquet to $75 for larger custom arrangements made on-site.

“It’s always a lot of fun hearing back from the person who receives the bouquet, because I then personalize it based on what they might like and their personality,” she says.

In between her pop-ups, she hosts corporate events, parties and weddings. So far, she has worked with a number of companies, including Lululemon, Free People and Universal Music Group.

For these events, the business or individual can choose to rent the truck without flowers, rent the truck with flowers that can be sold to attendees, or rent the truck and pay for the flowers in advance to be distributed free of charge to attendees. For these events, they charge based on the length of time the truck is reserved and the number of flowers they wish to purchase.

Because flowers are seasonal, she makes more money some months than others. Sales tend to fluctuate around holidays like Valentine’s Day and Mother’s Day, she said.

In general, Hintze strives to book at least three events a month, which she says allows her to earn enough money to cover her living expenses. However, she tries to limit her personal expenses so as not to exceed her income.

In May, however, Hintze saw the most bookings since she started her flower truck business. She booked 10 events and generated just over $16,000 in revenue.

“I hope to keep this momentum going for the rest of the year,” she said.

Here’s a look at the Main Street Flower Truck’s expenses for May 2024:

Hintze’s biggest expense was flowers, which totaled about $2,304 in May.

Before a pop-up or other event, she goes through her local flower district to pick out the blooms that look the freshest and brightest, she says.

“I’ve always been drawn to wildflowers and things that look very whimsical and magical,” she says. “I think that’s what makes this truck more fun.”

She then takes the flowers home and begins preparing them for sale by removing leaves, thorns, and cutting the stems. Finally, she arranges the flowers into bouquets and places them in various containers, such as antique milk jugs and vintage buckets.

Her other expenses are gas and maintenance on her pickup. Although the truck hasn’t needed any expensive repairs since she bought it, she’s sometimes had to learn how to fix mechanical problems on the fly.

“One of the biggest problems with having an old truck is how often it breaks down and having to randomly start it up the morning of an event when you’re supposed to be there at a certain time,” she says.

In the future, Hintze plans to continue growing Main Street Flower Truck and helping businesses and individuals bring their floral dreams to life. But she has no plans to expand her one-woman business just yet.

“People often ask me if I’m going to franchise the truck and have a fleet of flower trucks, and I don’t think that’s the plan forever, but definitely for a while,” she says. “My goal is to make the flower truck as successful as possible as a standalone business, and see how far it can go.”

She hopes the truck can one day be featured in TV shows or movies. “In the future, I hope Fiona gets her moment on the red carpet,” she says.

Hintze plans to continue enjoying the freedom and work-life balance she gained from starting Main Street Flower Truck.

“I’m looking forward to continuing to explore the creativity I have that has been put aside for so long and developing a routine that keeps my peace of mind at the forefront,” she says.

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