DUNEDIN, Fla. — As hurricane season is now underway, some business owners are just now making their comeback from last hurricane season.
What You Need To Know
- Sunset Smoothies and Ice Cream officially reopens in Dunedin
- The owner says Helene has made her a better businesswoman
- Employee describes tearful phone call from boss after Helene
- The business is located at 2606 Bayshore Blvd.
After being closed for eight months working on repairs and some new additions, local favorite Sunset Smoothies and Ice Cream in Dunedin is open to the public just in time for the summer.
“It really destroyed so much,” owner Dana Serabella said of Hurricane Helene in September.
“I had almost three feet of water in here. It broke the front window,” she said, describing what she saw the morning after Helene hit. “I had seaweed and glass. It floated all my freezers and flipped them, so I had ice cream melted everywhere.”
Serabella is a relatively new business owner. She said she could have thrown in the towel, but her customers, employees and her instinct drove her to push ahead.
“In my head, I’m like, ‘You started with zero experience, now you have two years, now you can take a step back, kind of redo some things,’ and this area is getting built up,” she said. “So since this isn’t the time to walk away, this is the time to redo some things differently.”
Serabella said she couldn’t have done it without employees like Anthony Zervoudakis, who never left her side.
Dana Serabella is a relatively new business owner. She said she could have thrown in the towel, but her customers, employees and her instinct drove her to push ahead. (Spectrum Bay News 9/Amber Gerard)
“I was so heartbroken when, you know, she came into the shop and she saw that everything was destroyed,” Zervoudakis said. “She ended up sending me a video and you could hear her, you know, crying in the background. That broke my heart. I ended up coming by the day of the hurricane.”
With incredibly sweet employees, the richness of her community and a refreshing start, no hurricane can stop her now.
