Today we’d like to introduce you to Matthew Day and Yumi Look.
Hi Matthew and Yumi, thanks for joining us today. We’d love for you to start by introducing yourself.
Hi Voyage Austin, thank you for taking the time to get to know Planterday! We’re Matt and Yumi and we run Planterday, a mission-driven, mobile plant shop dedicated to destigmatizing mental health and promoting mental health resources. We have the great fortune of collaborating with other local businesses in the Oakland/East Bay area and have been hosting plant trailer pop-ups since summer 2020. We’re also really excited to share that we’ll be opening our first brick and mortar shop in Oakland next month, in July!
Our business is rooted in plant therapy, mental health, and in honor of my (Matt’s) parents. In October 2018, I lost my mother to cancer. The pain and grief from her suffering and passing left me unable to work, let alone get through the day-to-day. At the time, the only solace I found was in gardening – when my partner Yumi and I landscaped, built, and grew flowers and vegetables in our garden. This form of therapy (plant therapy) is what kept me grounded through my grief and loss. Digging my hands into soil and watching our garden grow was consoling.
When I was in a state to work again, I knew I wanted to continue working with plants, so I applied for a job at my local Ace Garden Center. I learned so much from the awesome staff there that after a little while, I decided that I wanted to challenge myself and open my own plant business to spread plant therapy and how plants help me with my healing. This step into entrepreneurship is something my mother had also challenged herself with, after we lost my father to suicide 20 years ago. Based on my father’s mental health experience, my mom taught me some of my greatest life lessons, including “Help starts at home,” the idea that our mental health is crucial and a part of ourselves that we have to attend to in order for us to be our best selves to help others. It’s because of her that I wanted to open a business that spreads this life lesson and intentionally gives back to my community, and it’s because of my father that I chose to focus on destigmatizing mental health and partner with a local suicide prevention non-profit, Crisis Support Services of Alameda County.
So where did I start? Well last year in January 2020, I drove through many local neighborhoods looking for retail locations to lease from, but since I didn’t have a plant business up and running (just yet), no landlord would sign with me. That’s when I decided to go a different route–a mobile route. I jumped onto Craigslist to search for trailers and found one from a retiring electrician who was happy to sell his to me, a budding business owner. I spent the next month working on the trailer, staining the walls, drilling in pipes shelves, adding wood planks, hanging a mirror, and adding string lights!
The Planterday trailer was ready to hit the road by March 2020, and I was really excited to pop-up around town and sell houseplants to the community. However, by then, Covid-19 was rampant and that’s when we got our first pandemic lockdown stay-at-home order. So I switched gears (again) and decided to start selling houseplants online (with the help of the Instagram platform) offering deliveries and pick-up from our home in Oakland.
By August 2020, Yumi and I felt ready to take the trailer on the road and pop-up around town! We initially hosted our first few pop-ups by renting out an empty parking lot just two blocks away from our home, but it wasn’t long until we began to graciously receive invitations to collaborate with other local businesses here in the East Bay! For the next few months, we’d pop-up at a different business location every few weekends. At this point, I had returned to my original work industry (recruiting) full-time and Yumi (a 2nd grade teacher in OUSD) was teaching full-time, so while we worked one job from 9-5, we worked Planterday from 5-9.
Our entire journey has been a wild ride! This year in 2021, we hit the ground running and have been staying extremely busy, popping-up with different local businesses and at community events every weekend! We’ve had the honor of popping up with Tacos Oscar, Red Bay Coffee, Hella Bagels and The Hidden Cafe, Bicycle Pies, Taiwan Bento, Formosa Chocolates, Basuku Cheesecake, Sweet Green, The Rare Barrel, Queer First Fridays, Uchi House, Temescal Brewing, Alkali Rye and more! We’ve been invited to community events as well, like the annual Picnic on Telegraph event in Temescal, fundraisers like Bake Love Note Hate to support the AAPI community, and a youth health and wellness community event. We’re ready to take it to the next step and are opening our first brick and mortar in July! But that’s not the end of our mobile trailer pop-ups! Once we’re open and have our systems in place, we definitely plan to resume our weekend plant trailer pop-up collaborations!
I’m sure you wouldn’t say it’s been obstacle free, but so far would you say the journey have been a fairly smooth road?
As grateful as we are for our journey, much like our physical roads here, our metaphorical road has not always been smooth.There is no doubt that this pandemic has affected everyone and every business in a different way. Regarding business, this pandemic has taught us to be adaptable, flexible, to expect the unexpected (e.g. having to switch gears from in-person pop-ups to online orders, then to in-person) and to recognize the privileges that we have (e.g. being able to work remotely, from our home, during the pandemic). Juggling two jobs is a hustle and grind and hats off to those who are doing the same. When we go plant shopping, we’re shopping at 6am or 7am, we come home and unload, then start our 9-5s. After the 9-5, we focus on the plants again with maintenance, prepping, pricing, social media, planning future events, communicating with our wholesalers, getting necessary equipment, etc. We learned early on that as a mobile plant trailer, we’re at the mercy of the elements, so during the fire season, a few events were canceled and rescheduled due to the smoke and/or high heat advisories. We also always have to consider trailer logistics, like which locations we can physically fit in, which way to pull into a spot, what parking will be like, etc. We also have tune up days for the trailer. Starting a business from home is spatially challenging. Our house is half house, half stockroom (no joke) and as beautiful as having a jungle-like home can be, it’s also a lot of work to maintain. Speaking of space and stock, not having enough physical space has forced us to choose between online orders and in-person (pop-up) shopping (because we don’t have enough space to hold stock for both, so until we get our brick and mortar running, we’re selling in-person at pop-ups. Oh, and learning to work with your romantic partner as you’re growing your relationship can come with its challenges, but we’ve learned how our strengths and weaknesses really compliment each other and how important communication is. The biggest challenge for me though, is that I miss my mom and I wish she could see all of this.
Appreciate you sharing that. What should we know about Planterday?
Planterday is a mission-driven, mobile plant shop dedicated to destigmatizing mental health and promoting mental health resources. We partner with local businesses here in the East Bay and host fun pop-up collaborations. When you come to our pop-ups, we hope you have an experience filled with music, bubbles, beautiful plants, good vibes, and local business and community love. As official sponsors of Crisis Support Services of Alameda County, a portion of all proceeds are donated to their suicide prevention hotline. I’m most proud that we’ve been able to raise awareness for mental health and suicide prevention, as well as highlight other businesses, fundraisers, community initiatives, and more. We’re extremely appreciative of our community, there’s no way we could have gotten this far without their help.
Is there something surprising that you feel even people who know you might not know about?
I’ve been working as a recruiter for various mission-driven start-ups for the past ten years and currently work for an on-demand mental health provider called Ginger. I tell people I’m spoiled because I get to support mental health initiatives at my day job and my night job!
Contact Info:
- Email: planterday@gmail.com
- Website: www.planterday.com
- Instagram: @planter.day
- Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/Planterday-100973555402957
Image Credits
Planterday (Matthew Day and Yumi Look)
