Plants in your room, at no cost to you.
PILF installs the plants, keeps them alive, and sells them to your customers off your shelf. You do nothing.
The arrangement, in five plain terms
Worst case, the room looks better for a month and nothing sells.
What goes on the shelf
Eight plants, every one graded A or B for how much neglect it forgives — six of them fine in a room with barely a window, including fluorescent-lit rooms with none. Ambient plants placed as design, plus one defined shelf of grab-ready plants under a small header card. A defined zone reads as retail; a plant on its own reads as decor.
Every plant carries a tag with the room it needs and the number of days between waterings, in plain words, and the date it went on your shelf, written by hand. The shelf. · The scale.
Fair questions
Plants die in here. No windows, fluorescent light.
Two of the eight — snake plant and ZZ — want no window at all and are chosen for exactly this room. The date on every tag is the evidence: once one has been on your shelf for a month under your lights, that argument is over, and it’s the best sales pitch the plant has.
Nobody’s going to remember to water them.
Nobody in your building is asked to. PILF waters on the visit. Between visits, the plants are chosen because they don’t care.
It’ll look cluttered.
It’s a design install first — plain pots, one plant where one plant belongs, one small shelf zone where the grab-ready ones live. A photo of the plan comes before anything arrives. If it looks wrong, it goes.
Our customers won’t buy plants.
Maybe. That’s what the pilot is for, and it costs you nothing to find out. The people who do buy are the ones who wanted a plant and never got round to going to a plant shop — which is most people.
Someone will knock one over.
Then there’s soil on the floor for two minutes. Pots are sealed underneath, top-dressed with stone so nothing spills when tipped, and placed away from the routes people walk. Breakage is PILF’s loss, not yours.
What do staff actually say?
One line, when asked: “Those are for sale, by the way — you scan the tag.” When someone shows a receipt: a nod. Staff get a free plant at install, and nobody is on commission.
What’s the catch?
There isn’t one hidden. PILF makes money when plants sell off your shelf. The pilot is free because a shelf with a track record is worth more than a fee.
The boring parts
Permits and licences
You need none. The sale happens on PILF’s website, under PILF’s Chicago business licence; your shelf is a pickup point, not a point of sale. Nothing changes about your own licence.
Sales tax
Collected inside the flat price on PILF’s website and remitted by PILF to Illinois. It never touches your register.
The health inspector
Chicago’s food code has nothing to say about a potted plant. Even so: sealed pots, inorganic stone on top of the soil, no watering during service, and nothing within reach of food prep. It’s written into the agreement as a standing obligation.
Liability
PILF carries general liability insurance and can name your business as an additional insured, with a certificate issued the same day. Ask, and it’s in your inbox before the install.
What there is to sign
One page. What goes where, who owns what, the care protocol, and that either side can end it any time. Signed electronically.
The one thing to check on your end
Your lease. A few commercial leases restrict third-party sales on the premises. Most don’t, and consignment display is rarely what the clause means — but it’s worth a glance.
Want a shelf?
Email hello@pilf.me with the name of your place. A visit to look at the room and the light takes fifteen minutes, and a plan with a photo follows. First shelves go in the week of October 12, 2026, in and around Wicker Park.
Ask about a shelf