Tampa sweet shops reflect on two hurricanes

Everyone preparing for a storm has roughly the same factors to consider: securing a home, the safety of family and friends, resources to ride out the weather. But for food and beverage business owners, a lot more is at stake. What do you do when you are tasked with safeguarding a staff of 30, a storefront and a warehouse containing 10,000 pounds of chocolate? 

Austin and Grant Gappelberg, brothers and co-owners of Hampton Chocolate Factory, which offers chocolate candies and ice cream in the Sparkman Wharf district of downtown Tampa, spent Hurricanes Helene and Milton figuring out creative ways to protect the company’s inventory in their store and at an offsite warehouse.

“If all that chocolate melts, it's really hard to come back from that,” Grant Gappelberg says. 

Especially this time of year, when fourth quarter earnings account for 80% of sales through e-commerce and gift giving. 

When the power at the warehouse went out for three days during Hurricane Helene, the team had to react quickly. “We actually cut a hole in our wall so that we could put the portable [air conditioner] because a portable air conditioner has an exhaust hose for the hot air,” Gappelberg says, “Our warehouse general manager, he's very handy, and he was definitely a big help there. Brought his tool and literally cut it by hand.” 

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The chocolate was saved, but the ice cream at the storefront was not so fortunate. Although the store did not lose power during either storm or experience any flooding despite being in evacuation zone A (thanks to installed storm barriers), the closures to ensure employee and customer safety combined with slower foot traffic meant product spoilage.  

At HaleLife Bakery, which has 16 employees in four locations across Tampa and St. Pete, owner Laura McCutcheon faced a similar challenge.

“Everybody evacuated as of Monday afternoon, so it was just myself and my partner here. So we were responsible for boarding all this up,” McCutcheon says, referring to the HaleLife Bistro location in St. Pete. “I had all my flour, over 2000 pounds of flour, on my floor that I moved myself. He boarded everything up himself.” 

Not knowing which locations might lose power, she paused baking for two days before the storm and waited, ultimately riding out the storm at her Fifth Avenue South location in St. Pete where she was able to react to water that intruded into the store. Despite taking all the precautions available, the two storms cost her $70,000 in revenue and inventory loss. 

Although each of the stores survived, McCutcheon has plans to pivot so as not to continue relying solely on foot traffic. She recently purchased a trailer to get ‘HaleLife on the move’ and aspires to sell her mixes to bakeries around the country, coupling that with educational resources on how to make allergy-free goods without cross contamination. Classes and dining events are on the docket as well. 

For both companies, the intricacies of insurance policies are a struggle. 

“Getting property insurance for what they call wind coverage is non-existent really, especially in my industry. I haven't been able to find it,” McCutcheon says, “So when I lose, like business interruption, or loss of inventory, or, God forbid, product, my equipment [gets] damaged, it's not covered, so that's just a straight up loss I have to recoup.”

Similarly, Gappelberg notes, “ We only get insurance if we lose power for three days. That's the only way insurance covers it. So we definitely didn't lose power for three days. And actually, … with [Hurricane] Ian, we didn't lose power for three days either, just two.”

Despite the obstacles of the storm, both owners emphasized employees as the top priority over food and property. 

“Our store has been much slower, and it lasts a couple weeks. Two or three weeks after the storm, sales go down, and then they incrementally will come back,” Gappelberg says. “And so we have to staff appropriately, and basically remove some shifts, and that's hard, because people are dependent on those paychecks.”

“That's a big, big struggle is just managing the fear and the emotions of 16 people while trying to put your business back together,’ McCutcheon says. “Then also the concern that they're not working right now, and they clearly have bills that they need to pay, and they're concerned and they want to get back to work. So there's also that pressure of getting up and running as quickly as possible, but also managing all the other things that come along with it.”

For the businesses that are able to recover, the goal is to be back to business as usual sooner than later. McCutcheon notes, “We're just hoping that things start to even out here once the threat of any more storms are coming, plus also the election gets past us, we're hoping things kind of shift back in the normal area.”