Start with the question that catches more people in this category than any other: is it a plant or is it an arrangement? A rooted orchid is a living thing that needs a permanent spot, decent light and months of low-level attention — a genuinely lovely gift for someone who enjoys keeping plants alive, and a small obligation for someone who does not. Cut orchid stems are an arrangement: beautiful for a week or two, then cleared away and finished. The word on the listing does not distinguish them, and neither does a generic small-medium-large label. Read the description for what the plant actually is, what container it comes in and how big the whole thing is, then match it to the person. The older neighbour on the fourth floor who has kept the same African violets for a decade wants the plant. The friend who travels for work three weeks a month wants the arrangement, in a vessel she does not have to store afterwards.
Then the handoff, which in this borough is almost always vertical. Cliffside Park is one of the most densely settled municipalities in New Jersey and most of its households are above street level: the Winston Towers buildings, the high-rises along Gorge Road, apartments over the shops on Anderson Avenue, and the two-family houses on the streets running off Palisade Avenue. Each of those needs something different written on the order. For a tower: the building, the apartment, the name exactly as it reads on the buzzer panel — not the nickname the family uses — and what the desk is actually allowed to do, because some are staffed all day, some only in the evening, some run a package room that takes cartons and refuses anything holding water, and some boards do not permit perishables to be accepted for residents at all. For a two-family house: which unit, and whether the working door is the front steps or the side entrance off the driveway, plus a mobile number, because street parking on those blocks is tight and a driver who cannot raise anyone is standing in the road with the hazards on. Cliffside Park Towne Centre needs both kinds of care at once, since residences and commercial space share one street number; name the apartment and resident or the business and the person, and treat a concierge being present as information rather than as permission.