When a stranger called to ask if she wanted to buy a flower shop, Karen Pecora’s first reaction was a hard no. She was in the middle of a health crisis and didn’t have the bandwidth for anything else. “I have to go,” she remembers blurting out, before hanging up and thinking, “Whoa, that was a lot.” 

She barely knew the woman on the other end — it was a stranger who’d met Karen’s son at a networking event and started following her on social media. Karen texted an apology for dumping her whole life on someone she’d just met. The woman, ready to retire and sell her shop, wrote back without hesitating: This is still a great opportunity. Think about it while you figure out your other stuff. So Karen did. 

Fourteen months later, she owned Whitford at Malvern Flowers. This was on top of running Karen Pecora Events, the wedding and event floral business she’d built over 25 years, in addition to managing event rentals for several Main Line venues. This fall, she’s opening a second flower shop. Along the way, she’s raised two sons who each launched their own ventures before finishing high school.

Karen Pecora is a 2026 Main Line Parent Women of Influence Award Winner

Main Line Parent’s Women of Influence Awards celebrate exceptional women making significant impacts in our community. Karen was nominated by her son, Dom Pecora, and selected for her achievements and dedication to creating positive change. Each winner commits to supporting Family Focus Media’s core values, as we work together to foster belonging and empowerment for all families. All backgrounds, races, genders, and sexual orientations are welcome and safe with us.

A Brick-and-Mortar She Never Planned On

Karen never dreamed of owning a hometown flower shop. But the idea kept circling back to her, and the more she sat with it, the more it felt inevitable. She’d spent 25 years designing florals for weddings, and dabbled in memorial work, too. She says they are moments that “kind of go hand in hand.” A physical shop would finally give it all a home base. “I kept going back to a small shop in a hometown community,” she says. “It just fit.”

That fit shows up in the everyday stuff: teenage boys picking out homecoming corsages, families leaning on her for both weddings and funerals, sometimes in the same year. “These are all things I’ve done in the past,” she says, “but the brick-and-mortar tied it together.”

Running the Show, No Matter What

Six weeks after buying Whitford, Karen had major surgery that sidelined her completely — unable to even move through a store that wasn’t yet handicap accessible. “Ask anyone who knows me what happens if you strap Karen to a bed,” she says. “I’d be a raging lion trying to break free.” For a woman who’d spent 25 years building and running businesses and raising her kids largely on her own, sitting still was its own kind of challenge.

Her mother Pearl, 77 and retired, came out of retirement and ran the new shop, six days a week for all six weeks. Around her, a mostly female team took shape: high school and college women learning floral design on the job and helping run the shop’s social media, often their first real taste of the industry.

During the wedding season, that team gets one loud addition of what Karen calls the “Whitford fraternity.” This is a group of local guys hauling, setting up, and climbing ladders for weddings and events. 

Between the two, more than a few Main Line teenagers have gotten their first job — and their first real workday — through Karen’s shop.

Chasing Chester County’s Best-Kept Secret

Karen sourced flowers the way she always had — through wholesalers — until the day a “bucket truck” showed up. This was a farmer in his own delivery van, driving shop to shop so florists could climb in and pick that week’s fresh harvest. It sent her down a rabbit hole. Karen got curious about what she and her customers were really bringing into their homes. She learned that only an estimated 4 to 5 percent of the global flower industry is grown without heavy chemical use.

A year of visiting Chester County farms later, Karen is opening a flower market in Berwyn featuring 100% Pennsylvania-grown florals, year-round, no wholesalers. It’ll offer DIY classes, from moms building baby shower centerpieces to full wedding parties arranging their own bouquets with instructors on hand. “Whitford will still specialize in a dozen roses and things coming from all over the world,” Karen says. “The new shop is going to be very niche, very market-based.”

The Mom-and-Son Shop Duo

Karen credits a lot of her brick-and-mortar knowledge to her younger son, Dom, who opened his own nonprofit bike shop, Dom Fixes Bikes, in Malvern at age 10. “He basically taught me pricing, ordering, staffing, scheduling, and customer service,” she says. “We learned it together.” Dom’s mission — a bike for anyone, regardless of age, race, or financial situation — became her model for giving back through flowers.

That philosophy shows up in Whitford’s community giving: support for the Tredyffrin & Easttown Cares fundraiser and the Camilla Hall event. Additionally she donated florals for select fundraisers throughout the year. This year, Karen’s also sponsoring Great Valley Soccer and Conestoga football. 

Her favorite story comes from Conestoga rugby, where a group of graduating seniors — including her older son, Chris, now playing Division I rugby at Kutztown — asked her to make custom rugby balls covered in flowers to take to college. She checked with the coach, made the balls, and still gets photos from campuses across the country. “We still have connections to our team,” they tell her, “because we’re taking this with us.”

The Difference Between a Flower Shop and a Supermarket Aisle

Karen lights up talking about the kids who wander into her shop. On one particularly hard day — not long after her oldest left for college — a little boy in a baseball uniform walked in and asked if he could make flowers for his mom. “We had the best day ever,” she says. He still comes back for Mother’s Day and Valentine’s Day.

The shop even made a sticker in his likeness. “Kids don’t do things perfectly,” Karen says. “If you have this chaotic, non-matching, organically thrown-together arrangement — what mother isn’t going to love that?”

The Berwyn shop will run regular mom-and-me and grandmom-and-me flower classes, something Karen expects to lean into hard once Dom leaves for college. “I’ll need a lot of little kids around me,” she laughs.

The Hardest Day

For everything Karen juggles, she says the hardest day of her life was moving Chris into his college dorm. He’s thriving now on Kutztown’s rugby team, and Karen and her mom make the drive most weekends to watch him play. “I’m not at all who I am without my family,” she says. Her late father taught her to chase whatever she wanted — a lesson she’s clearly passed down to two sons who achieved big goals before finishing high school.

There’s a full-circle piece to this honor, too. Karen and Main Line Parent founder Sarah first met at a Starbucks in Ardmore, before Main Line Parent existed anywhere but an idea. In fact, Karen’s own birth story ran as the cover feature of the magazine’s very first print issue. “It’s an honor to accept this,” she says, “on behalf of that whole journey.”

What’s Next

Karen’s Berwyn flower market is targeting a fall 2026 opening, with a soft launch the first weekend of October. Beyond that? More shops. “I want to spread the joy that flowers bring through many communities.”

Follow Whitford at Malvern Flowers at malvernflowers.com and on Instagram @whitford_at_malvernflowers. Connect with Karen Pecora on LinkedIn.

Help us honor Karen by sharing what her contributions mean to you in the comments below.