Local plant shop Plantiitas will celebrate the grand opening of its second location at 2011 E 4th St. on Saturday, May 7 and Sunday, May 8.
“It’s a lot of mixed emotions. We’re really excited. We’re really nervous,” said Anthony Diaz, who runs the shop with his partner Kevin Alcaraz. “It feels like we’re doing it all over again for the first time almost, only this time we have a little bit more experience under our belt.”
The couple began their business with pop-up shops just before the pandemic arrived, selling plants, ceramic pots and Alcaraz’s handmade macrame. The double “ii” in Plantiitas represents Diaz and Alcaraz together.
“We were just selling house plants out of our garage and we never imagined that this could become what it’s becoming now,” Diaz said.
Plantiitas carries a wide range of plants suitable for plant parents, be they beginners or experts: Monstera Peru, Snow Queen Pothos, Aglaonema Red Valentine, Ficus Altissima, Frosty Spears and much more. The business also sets its prices so that everyone can afford to take something home, with several plants for sale for under $5.
“I believe that plants should be accessible,” Diaz told the Signal Tribune in a September 2020 interview. “But Kevin was really the one who said, ‘Anthony, I want to make these prices affordable for people so that they feel good about coming back,’ and that really spoke to me.”
The couple opened its first brick-and-mortar location in the Belmont Heights neighborhood in the fall of 2020.
“There’s so much to retail and working and having a storefront, like licensing and permitting, that we honestly just didn’t know about and we had to learn along the way,” Diaz said.
Now that its second location is opening, Plantiitas will begin transforming its original brick-and-mortar location at 4003 E 4th St. into a market space for local small businesses.
“We’re hoping to make it a space where we can encourage other marginalized small businesses, women-owned, women of color-owned, LGBTQ-owned, and just in general marginalized communities, to give them a chance at getting into a storefront,” Diaz said.
The couple expects the original location to be fully transformed into the new Plantiitas Market by July.
Helping other small businesses succeed is in line with Plantiitas’ slogan: Para Todos Sale el Sol, which means “there’s enough sun for everybody.”
As Plantiitas has continued to grow, Diaz said he and Alcaraz have received support and encouragement from the community.
“Sometimes we can’t tell the forest from a tree,” Diaz said. “We’re really stressed all the time and we’re running around all the time and just running the store, getting product in, running our social media, doing business, we don’t really see how impactful our shop can be to people, how inspirational it can be. And that’s what we’ve been learning over the last couple of months.”
The public is invited to celebrate the opening of Plantiitas’ second location at 2011 E 4th St. on Saturday, May 7 and Sunday, May 8 from 11 a.m. to 7 p.m.
