Welcome to the Jane's Journey Blog—my personal journey from flowers to flash-frozen food, from a Bronx basement to the shelves of your freezer.
This isn’t just a food story.
It’s life.
📚 From Petals to Plates — How I Built Jane Foodie
It all started in the Bronx. I just wanted to stay home and raise my son—but I needed to make money. I noticed everyone around me was getting married, so I started brainstorming and I decided to create fresh flowers from my basement on weekends. I discovered that you get paid upfront before the event! I didn’t have to layout ] and there were no terms. This was what - I later in life discovered - was an opportunity!
I was always creative, always making things and was an entrepreneur at the age of 8 when I would hop the fence at the conEdison building and cut some colorful wires (of course from their castaways!) and make jewelry. Girl’s gotta make a living! My flowers were another medium that I could get lost in. Without training other than imagination, I used flowers, foliage, berries and vines to create living sculptures that captured the essence of the people I met. I had the ability to create plant-based expressions that truly captured a person’s essence. I would attentively listen to a client’s thoughts - what made them unique and what they loved - and interpreted that into a floral sculpture. I found that I had a unique ability and was so very grateful to find something I was truly good at. I was in my element! I think finding out what you do well brings on the passion to do more, to do better.
The fresh floral shoes pictured (below) in Art and Sole were created for Jane Weitzman for the Stuart Weitzman store. Jane wrote a book and had artists from around the world create shoes out of their medium. I had the privilege of being the first and the last shoe featured in the book and was humbled, to say the least.
Art & Sole: A Spectacular Selection of More Than 150 Fantasy Art Shoes from the Stuart Weitzman CollectionMy floral creations were anything but girly as I was definitely a tomboy back then. Word soon spread. To my amazement, people started traveling from NYC and Westchester to my basement in The Bronx just to get my designs. Again, I was humbled, floored and oh so excited!
That’s how Jane Carroll Flowers was born.
🎨 Sculpting with Nature
I wasn’t interested in making “pretty arrangements.” I wanted to create sculptural floral art (yes, those are real flowers, petals, and foliage I used)—things people had never seen before.
From high-heeled shoes made of petals to wearable flower bras to fresh flowered hangbags for bouquets event centerpiece's running 40ft long made to look like a rock garden. I remember doing a man’s 80th birthday party at the Water Club in NYC and I asked his family what he loved and what he will be remembered for. I made a fisherman’s hat out of foliage, fresh flower tie, briefcase, ashtray and cigars all made out of fresh flower petals and leaves. He arrived while I was still there, and he asked me to meet him outside. As I wandered over to him I could see he was tearing up and a big grin enveloped his face. He was overwhelmed by the tables, how they represented his life through the years and that the story was told, no less, by floral sculptures. As I walked away smiling from ear to ear, I remember thinking to myself, how amazing it is to have the ability to truly touch someone’s soul. Now, would I have preferred to be a singer or an actor where I didn’t have to deal with perishables and deliveries and rely on nature to dictate my colors and textures? Sure but this girl from the Bronx realized she had the ability to make another human being smile - make them happy with something I created with my own mind and hands - and that was priceless. I found what I was good at it and it made me want to do more.
🌟 The National Spotlight
My first retail fresh flower product, Boxed in Blooms, landed on The Oprah Winfrey Show, was presented on the coveted O List, featured in People Magazine, and even earned me an interview with the legendary Barbara Walters. That led to me being contacted by the new President of Caesars Palace in Las Vegas who asked me, "how can I get you to Caesars?". I told him, "send me a ticket," which he did and I spent 3 years out there creating floral arrangements for the hotel. As a kicker, I was tasked to redesign Sir Elton John’s entire penthouse suite! This was way beyond floral creations. In Vegas-speak, I parlayed my floral ability to become an Interior Designer to one of the most talented stars in the world. Again, humbling.
I was shipping sculptural florals across the country and had a celebrity following.
💔 The Crash and the Curveball
Then, in July 2008—I had a heart attack. Two months later, the Great Recession hit. In a flash, weddings dried up. My business collapsed. Everything I built felt like it disappeared overnight.
But here’s the thing:
Do you hold your head and hope life changes, or do you grab the curveball thrown at you and pivot?
🔥 So I Pivoted
I shifted to food. I opened a tiny café called Jane On Main and started freezing my gourmet fixings for consistency. That tiny idea became a system—and that system became Jane Foodie.
What began with flowers in my Bronx basement in 1996 blossomed into something far bigger than I had ever imagined. By 2002, I had built an online floral brand that landed me on Oprah’s O List, People Magazine, and into the hands of celebrities across the country. I wasn’t just making bouquets—I was building a unique fresh floral concept, one stem at a time.
And just when it felt like everything was blooming...life had other plans.
But before the pivot, before the pain, and before I found myself standing on a Shark Tank stage smiling nervously for the silent 30 seconds in front of the sharks waiting for the mic check—I was a woman on a mission to build something, to be successful, to take care of my family and take those I love along for the ride of a lifetime, if I just kept going!
Somehow in my early years I just didn't feel worthy. I had that imposter syndrome and probably to some extent I still do. Hoping this blogging will help me realize, it has been, and it continues to be a wonderful life filled with connections and meaning. Someone recently asked me what my favorite movie was, my response, a tie between "It’s A Wonderful Life” and “The Wizard Of Oz”....hmm, I wonder what a shrink would say about that?????
This is where the Jane Foodie journey truly begins.