Maya Boustani knew there was an American market for the edible arrangements of gourmet marshmallows her mother made in Beruit for birthdays, engagements, even weddings.

'I kept telling her, `This is such a great idea. We really need to bring it to the States,' '' recalls Boustani, 26. ``I hadn't seen anything like it here.''

When her husband's engineering job brought the immigrant couple from Philadelphia to Miami in 2006, Boustani decided the time had come.

``I knew Miami was the perfect place because people here like to party, and there are a lot of different cultures.''

Her mother, Valerie Moroue, and 17-year-old brother, Gus, joined the Boustanis in Miami. Family members scraped together their savings and, in October, opened Sweet Flowers at the Shops at Sunset Place.

Colorful marshmallow arrangements fill the tiny shop. In back, plastic bins of party favors and spools of ribbon share space with boxes of cellophane bags and marshmallows imported from Spain.

A DIFFERENT TASTE

They aren't the pasty, packaged kind we know here. Sprinkled with sugar and flavored with vanilla, these confections are eaten like bonbons in Europe.

''If people come in and taste the marshmallows, it's a sale,'' Boustani boasts.

The creations are deceptively simple: dyed marshmallows arranged four to a skewer, topped by a party favor to fit the occasion, individually wrapped in a cellophane bag, tied with a ribbon and then anchored in a color Styrofoam base.

In a typical month, she calculates, Sweet Flowers uses 14,286 marshmallows, 3,328 skewers and 2,639 cellophane bags.

At first, each family member was assigned a specific role: Moroue would continue making her creations, her son Gus would do the sales, Boustani's husband, Wally, the accounting, and Boustani the marketing. As it has worked out, everybody pitches in wherever needed.

The Boustanis have day jobs -- Wally as a mechanical engineer for an international company and Maya as a researcher on adolescent drug use at the University of Miami. Moroue recently left to spend the summer in Lebanon, where her husband, Imad, owns a small manufacturing company, so Boustani has stepped into the designer role -- and everyone babysits the couple's 15-month-old daughter, Noor.

''We all like it this way,'' Moroue said in a telephone interview. ``It's better than working with strangers.''

Boustani feels at home with Miami's cultural potpourri. The eldest of four, she was born in Gabon, and attended an American school in that African country until she was 12, when political instability sent the family to Spain.

They eventually moved to Lebanon to be near her father's family. (Her mother is French.) As a result, she speaks English, Spanish, French and Arabic -- a useful skill in dealing with both local and international customers.

''My mother was really smart about that,'' Boustani says. ``When I was learning English or Spanish [in school], we always had French and Arabic teachers.''

PERMITS AND CODES

Setting up shop in Miami proved far more complicated than running a home business in Lebanon. It took months to land all the necessary permits and remodel the space to meet county code. Moroue's Spanish supplier had to adjust the formulation and packaging of the marshmallows to satisfy U.S. requirements.

There also was a learning curve when it came to South Florida customers. With Valentine's Day on a Thursday, the family was surprised -- and a little worried -- when the second week in February got off to a slow start. But then came Wednesday.

Join the discussion

Note: If this is your first time using our NEW commenting system, you will have to LOG OUT and then LOG BACK IN.

The Miami Herald is pleased to provide this opportunity to share information, experiences and observations about what's in the news. Some of the comments may be reprinted elsewhere in the site or in the newspaper. We encourage lively, open debate on the issues of the day, and ask that you refrain from profanity, hate speech, personal comments and remarks that are off point. In order to post comments, you must be a registered user of MiamiHerald.com. Your username will show along with the comments you post. Thank you for taking the time to offer your thoughts.

     Showing: Oldest first Newest first Most-recommended first Least-recommended first

@Nyx.AuthorDisplayName@ wrote on @Nyx.PostedAtTime@:

@Nyx.CommentBody@

@Nyx.Recommender@ @Nyx.AbuseReporter@