Safety Harbor business reopens after hurricane damage

SAFETY HARBOR, Fla. — You may not believe in signs from the universe, but from Todd Anderson’s point of view, signs have been a part of his life in a multitude of ways.

Like, for example, his current job running Spice of the Harbor in Safety Harbor.

“It’s not a day at work,” Anderson said. “This is a day at the shop and spending time with my wife and doing stuff that I love.”

Todd and his wife, Heather, started Spice of the Harbor in November 2020 after a sizeable career in, ironically enough, the sign industry.

“We did wraps like at Tropicana Field,” Anderson said, “large format signs like that.”

But when the Andersons lost their jobs during the pandemic, they pivoted to their love of all things spice.

“This is a passion,” Anderson said. “And, I mean, when I say we live and die with this. We live and die. Before we created, we studied every book we could.”

Not only did they study spices and hot sauces, but everything in their store, all 1,500 plus products, they’ve personally tested.

Four years later, all signs pointed to this being a rewarding decision, but another sign was fast approaching — and this one was more literal.

“Our neighbor’s billboard sign,” Anderson said. “It’s about 30 feet tall, 10 feet wide, it actually had its own roof. It’s been decaying over a couple years, and it blew over onto our roof.”

During Hurricane Milton, the wind was so strong that the large sign fell onto their roof and caved it in, which exposed the inside of the shop to the storm’s wind and rain.

“We walked in the door and just our hearts fell,” Anderson said. “Didn’t know what to do. Never experienced anything like this.”

As devastating as this was, there was another sign in all of this for Anderson that he held onto to believe things would be OK.

“We never broke one bottle,” he said. “I have 1,500 different SKUs in here. Never broke one bottle.”

With hundreds of glass bottles remaining intact, work immediately began to fix Spice of the Harbor, but the construction inside meant that Todd and Heather couldn’t even fulfill online orders.

They’ve been going without any money coming in for a month which is even more difficult because, according to Todd, they make 75 percent of their revenue in October, November and December.

That said, the work is nearly complete and when they finally open up their doors Friday, they get to take the sign down saying they’re temporarily closed for construction, which will give Todd his own sign that things are getting back to normal.