From Devastation to Determination in the Gulf Coast Aftermath: Heidi & Michael Butler

Ever felt the surreal helplessness of watching your dreams wash away? Michael and Heidi Butler, owners of The Helm Restaurant, give us a poignant glimpse into their world as they watched their beloved establishment fill with ocean water from afar, thanks to hurricanes Helene and Milton. Their story sets the stage for a broader discussion on the profound impacts these natural disasters have had on businesses and communities across Florida and the southern United States. Through their experiences and those of others like an upholstery business owner forced to delay retirement, we explore the overwhelming challenges faced by local entrepreneurs.

The chaos left in the wake of these storms extends far beyond personal loss. With Walk-In Talk Media’s own Pooch Rivera’s dedicated disaster relief efforts, we shed light on the urgent need for innovative civil engineering solutions to safeguard communities from future disasters. From the staggering debris in St. Pete Beach to the interconnected waters of the intercoastal and Gulf, the damage is vast and indiscriminate. Yet amid the destruction, stories of resilience emerge, highlighting the spirit of community support and the determination to rebuild cherished memories.

Hope and a sense of community spirit shine through as we discuss initiatives like the love boat-themed event organized by Tampa Bay Watch. This event, alongside community-driven projects like oyster shell recycling, symbolizes the passion and commitment to rebuilding that defines these disaster-prone areas. As we reflect on the importance of staying and fighting for the places we love, our conversations underscore the vital role of community solidarity and innovative solutions in overcoming adversity. Join us as we explore these stories of resilience, hope, and the unwavering human spirit in the face of nature's fury.

Please find out how to assist: http://www.helmtampabay.com/

Keep an eye open for the St. Pete beach fundraiser Heidi and company are putting together! 

Introducing the SupraCut System - the automated solution that enhances safety, quality, and efficiency, cutting up to 120 perfect citrus wedges per minute, 6 times faster than manual. Patented tech delivers uniform slices, reducing waste and eliminating plastic, while the hygienic, contactless design lowers contamination and injuries, integrating seamlessly to transform your operations and improve profitability - get started at SupraCut.com and ask about risk-free trials.

The following brands and companies help us continue supporting the food industry - have a look below! 

Chapters

• 0:51 Hurricanes Devastate Businesses, Communities
• 6:40 Aftermath of Natural Disasters
• 12:16 Community Support After Hurricane Impact
• 19:48 Rebuilding After Natural Disaster

Transcript

Speaker 1: 0:51

hello food fam. This is the walk and talk podcast, where you will find the perfect blend of food fun and cooking knowledge. I'm your host, carl fiordini. Welcome to the number one food podcast in the country. We're recording on site at ibages Studios, where food photography comes alive and I get to eat it. Hey gang out there looking to build that Instagram of Walk Talk. So if you could please do a follow at Walk Talk Show.

Speaker 1: 1:17

All right, we've had back-to-back hurricanes Helene and Milton and they've hurt a lot of people from Florida up into North Carolina, tennessee, georgia it's basically the whole South. There's an estimated $50 billion in damages and, more importantly, there's many lives lost due to the mountain landslides and the coastal water surge. In fact, where I'm at, I'm inland and our river, the Alifi River, crested at 25 feet. It's devastating. So today on the program we have our dear friends Michael and Heidi Butler. They are the owners of the Helm Restaurant on St Pete Beach. I've seen footage of the water surge rising above their bar top With the ocean filling up their restaurant. It's incredible. We're going to talk to them and kind of see how they're going to what happened and how they're going to rebuild and what's kind of going on Also, putra Vera he's been in North Carolina doing disaster cooking and he's now in Bradenton.

Speaker 1: 2:24

His team is here in Florida participating in the disaster relief effort. Here he's on his way to the next assignment, but he stopped into the studio to kind of give an update and share some of the experiences with us and with you, the audience. So we're going to get right into it today. Michael Heidi Pooch, welcome to the program. Hey, hey, hey there. So I saw the video on Instagram and it was hair raising. You know, number one, I know you guys, and just to see that your livelihoods were filling up with water, the building was filling with the ocean, and I really felt for you guys. Yeah, yeah, I mean obviously, whatever we could do here to to assist in what you have going on. You're, you have it, you got it, and if you could please share the story.

Speaker 3: 3:20

Oh, we appreciate that very much and appreciate you having us on the show. You know it's. It was a helpless feeling, to say the least. We have opened a second location in Greenville, south Carolina, and so we were not in Florida when it happened. However, we have security cameras installed in the restaurant and for some reason, we never lost power that whole night and we just painstakingly watched as the water filled the restaurant and just, it's just a feeling that's unexplainable.

Speaker 3: 3:55

You know, you're you're watching it and you're like, okay, well, the water's on the sidewalk and now it's, it's up on the patio and and then you start to see it come through the bottom of the door and then within an hour, it's halfway up the wall and your furniture is starting to float.

Speaker 3: 4:13

And now your equipment is starting to float. And I could gauge it by, like, we have an expo table in our front part of our restaurant, right below the kitchen window, and it's an old baker's table, so it's all steel table with a butcher block top and it has drawers in it, and so I I could gauge how much the water was going up, because I was like it's covering the feet of the table, now it's at the drawer, now it's at the second drawer, now it's at the third drawer and, uh, it's every time. You don't want to look away, but you want to look away, and you know, every time you look away and then look away. But you want to look away, and you know, every time you look away and then look back at the camera, you're just like, oh god, it's still coming in and at one point we could look out of the window and the street and the water was as high as the window outside, as it was inside the fact that the fact that you were able to you kept power through that.

Speaker 1: 5:10

I don't even know what that means, I can't even wrap my brain around that, but you were actually watching it and what kind of surreal feeling was that.

Speaker 3: 5:21

Oh, it's very surreal. It's still surreal, like even when you just drive to the restaurant on the streets of the beaches and you see everyone's things on the side of the road. It's it definitely doesn't feel real like. It feels like you're in a movie, a horror movie at that. It's just you know, it's not just us, it's so many people have lost so many things. Very gut-wrenching, yeah, it's an overwhelming feeling.

Speaker 1: 5:55

Yeah, how many people are you aware of? I mean, I know you have a lot of friends in the area, business owners alike, along with restaurateurs and whatever, but how many of your, your friends, experienced the same situation as you?

Speaker 3: 6:11

There's too many to count honestly. I mean, I I talked to a guy yesterday, he he came into the restaurant just to kind of check on us and, lovely man, he has an upholstery business on St Pete beach like two blocks from the helm, and he was looking to retire and he upholstered our booths out of sailcloths that are in the helm and he was looking to retire at the end of last year and so when he came in I was like hey, I thought you retired. And he was like well, I can't now because I lost everything in my business. I lost most things in my home. And then he hired a company to come in and clean his home out you know, get the stuff out of his home. And they cleaned him out literally and took all of his jewelry and every other belonging that he had, like the Grinch stealing the Christmas tree.

Speaker 1: 7:03

What Okay so.

Speaker 3: 7:05

It's unbelievable. How do you no-transcript no, the sand, the sand is out of the street. I don't think st pete beach didn't take on as much sand as, like places like madera and ruddington, like those places were absolutely devastating. St Pete Beach has just tons and tons and tons of debris. You know, because you've got all these condos and duplexes and small little motels and all these homes, because there's a lot of residential area around us and it's just filled with debris, like filled I saw pictures like filled.

Speaker 1: 8:16

I saw pictures, I saw a video of the don cesar and hotel, yeah, and what I saw was the, you know, the ocean wrapping around the building. If I, if i- yeah yeah, and what that means is, I mean, how far, how far inland did the water go? How far in did it actually reach?

Speaker 3: 8:31

Well, I mean, at one point they were saying that the intercoastal and the Gulf essentially connected. Wow so, but I don't know, you know that goes into Gulfport. So you know, gulfport got it, south Pasadena got it, we, our home is off of Park Street and that's off the intercoastal and they, they got water. I mean a lot of homes that were on the water there. They took on water. So I mean just pretty far inland, you know, definitely in in those sea evacuation. You know the A, b and those, uh, sea evacuation. You know the a, b and c. It definitely went into the sea. You know it's pretty crazy. How's your home? Our home was fine. We had no power up until yesterday. So another seven or eight days without power. But we had a generator here and the gas shortage was a real thing. That's, you know, you're getting in line. There's police officers, there's people yelling. It's like tensions are so high everywhere. It's like I don't know, it's like you're in a war zone or something.

Speaker 1: 9:41

Right. So back in 2005, I guess it was, when there were the four storms in a four to five week period, I think that was Katrina too right.

Speaker 2: 9:52

I can't believe it. Gustav came right after Katrina. A week later I was living in.

Speaker 1: 9:57

South Florida and my area. I was in Hollywood at the time. My area was hit each week for it felt like a month, I believe it was each week for four weeks and we didn't have I didn't have power. For three and a half of those weeks I didn't have power at all and there was no fuel and it was anarchy in the area because there was no cell service, there wasn't anything and you were really left to your own devices. Luckily, we weren't flooded out, we didn't, you know know, the roof didn't come off or anything like that. But you're really, you're alone.

Speaker 1: 10:33

So yes I from then I learned back, you know, after that experience always have some sort of like provisions in your house water, food to last a month, you know, just because you never know when these things are going to happen. So I, I'm you know, just because you never know when these things are going to happen. So I'm you know. I kind of I was fortunate not to have to really leave the house. I don't, I think this is the second day that I actually left my house over the last two weeks. It's been yeah, and, and I my heart goes out to everybody affected by this, and those people up in North Carolina are, I don't even think we've heard that everything that's actually going to come out at some point that's going on up there.

Speaker 2: 11:12

You know, and the biggest thing is that, from what I observed from being up in North Carolina, was that everything to this point, as far as civil engineering, has now just been thrown to the wind. You know, so what they expected dams to be at and highways to be at, and all these things that they did, you know, created in the 60s with the. You know the big, the brand new deal. Now it's gonna. You know, it's up to whoever wins this president's race, to you know, to really make it happen to reproduce. And whether it be the coastlines, whatever it is anywhere in the united states, it's susceptible to heavy raining and hurricanes. We're going to have to come up with the civil engineering ideas to fix these problems. If not, there won't be these destinations like Asheville and St Pete and wherever else people go to vacation.

Speaker 3: 12:00

You, know you're right.

Speaker 2: 12:03

Absolutely.

Speaker 3: 12:03

Yeah, I mean it was, it was. It's bad here. It was awful there. North Carolina was awful I'm not sure what the next steps are?

Speaker 1: 12:14

I mean, I even so leaving. Today, when I, when I came here to the studio, I passed a house there's a row of houses of maybe two or three, two to three miles away from where I'm at, and they all have solar panels on the on the roofs and I always wondered well, I wonder how those things are going to do during a hurricane. And I'll be damned. You know they were the panels, were not all of them, but they were definitely missing, solar panels off of those roofs. And I'm just thinking to myself, wow, and now you know, who knows what kind of hole or damage the roof is going to have? I don't know, know.

Speaker 2: 12:47

What kind of damage that those solar panels did to somebody else's home.

Speaker 1: 12:50

Yeah, that they flew off. Who knows where they went. Yeah, this is to piggyback on what you're talking about, pooch, in terms of engineering and how that's going to look going forward, but I think everyone should have the extra tie downs in their roof. Everyone should have the hurricane windows. It should just be like a mandatory thing. I don't care where you are, especially if you're within 20 miles of water, and as far as the poor people up in the mountains.

Speaker 2: 13:22

Never expect that to happen.

Speaker 1: 13:23

I mean no, had that ever happened up there before?

Speaker 2: 13:27

I don't think so.

Speaker 1: 13:29

Yeah, you can't even judge something like that.

Speaker 2: 13:33

Jeff was saying I can barely remember yesterday, but I think it was say 40 trillion gallons of water were dumped right on Asheville alone or that area. Yes, I can't even fathom that. It's crazy.

Speaker 3: 13:45

A lot of that water was coming down from North Carolina into the river that our restaurant is on up there and they had to leave the dam open because it would have broken the dam. So the dam was putting out 11,000 cubic inches per minute of water and there was no way to stop it.

Speaker 3: 14:10

You know that was another whole helpless feeling You're just sitting there watching the another whole helpless feeling is you're just sitting there watching the river rise and rise, and rise and rise, and we live on property with the restaurant. So we thankfully got a box truck that we used for the tubing business and loaded our furniture up in it. It was in our space because we're like we're gonna flood here too, and it came all the way up to our back wall of where we live and it stopped, and then the river sat there for probably two days before it started to recede how, how, how's your, how's your mental capacity right now?

Speaker 3: 14:45

if I may ask, no, it's, uh, it's pretty shy I mean, we tried it.

Speaker 3: 14:51

I'm a very positive person. I have a really strong faith and you know, I believe there's a plan. We don't know what it is. We don't question it. You know we'll figure it out as we go along. But you just have to look at things day by day. You know I, when this all happened, I looked at Michael and I said, look, this is where we're at. We're in a marathon at this point and if you look at the end and you keep trying to look ahead for the finish line, it's going to wear you out. You're going to feel out of breath, your legs are going to feel tired, all the things. But if you just look 10 feet in front of you and take things minute by minute, sometimes day by day, hour by hour, whatever it takes to just stay focused straight ahead of you and we'll be okay, we'll win this race. But we can't get overwhelmed or it's going to crush us.

Speaker 1: 15:44

You know I love that positivity, yeah, wise words, and the fact that you can muster that up and speak it. I hear your voice. So audience. I know Heidi and Michael fairly well. We've done a lot of content related projects together and you know been to the restaurant many, many times and I can tell you that these two people are good people and fun and energetic and you know just happy-go-lucky folks and they care about what they do. You know the product that they put out in the restaurants, the way the restaurant looks, everything.

Speaker 1: 16:35

So you know, I guess I'm just saying the fact that you are as positive with your outlook as you are. I hope everybody hears this and I hope that. I hope that's going to be some wind in the sail for somebody yeah, me too.

Speaker 3: 16:42

What is the?

Speaker 2: 16:43

wind in the sails for you guys right now like what, what is what? What do you guys foresee in the next week, two weeks? You know you're dealing with two different restaurants, yet you're gonna have to rebuild now. You know that's good being a restaurateur myself.

Speaker 2: 16:55

That's a tall task and and uh, coming back from a katrina, it took a village, you know. It really took a passionate community. I can't speak on behalf of people from saint pete, but new orleans was a very much a hospitality type of town still is, but it took the community to come together to do that. Do you guys feel like the community is going to back you in St Pete?

Speaker 3: 17:15

Absolutely I mean every day I get a text or a call or a message on Facebook or a comment where people are like we support you a hundred percent, like, whatever it takes. What do you need? You know?

Speaker 2: 17:29

can we do anything for you?

Speaker 3: 17:30

Yeah, everybody's willing to help and, like, we have a couple of our employees that they're like I don't want to go find another job.

Speaker 3: 17:40

I mean they may need to, but they're like I don't want to find another job. So they come there every day and volunteer their time because they're sick and tired of sitting at home to help us clean up this mess. And I mean it's. It means a lot because we look at the home as a family and we treat our staff like family and it's hard for us to tell them to go find another job because we love them so much, you know. But we got to do what's best for them. And the fact that some of them have stepped up and they're I mean, some of them had to go get other jobs, you know, and these people are just, fortunately, in a situation where they didn't have to get a job right away, but just the fact that they're there to support us, you know not, it's not just about coming in and cleaning everything and spraying everything out or whatever. It's the fact that they show up and they're there for you, not just physically but emotionally too.

Speaker 1: 18:35

So that kind of that kind of kicks off something that you have coming up. It's a benefit that you were explaining to us. Can you get into that a little bit what you're trying to achieve?

Speaker 3: 18:45

Yeah. So you know, like I was saying earlier, it's it's not just us that's affected by this. There's's, you know, the thing that we love the most about St Pete Beach and probably one of the main reasons why we decided to open a restaurant there is it's still a little salty beach town. It's a small community. There's 10,000 residents that live there. There's a ton of small businesses, little mom and pop restaurants and motels, and that's what we love about it. You know it's never going to get crazy overdeveloped, it's just. You know the residents will never let that happen. But, that being said, there's just. There are people that are in our same situation. Because of that, you know, they want to be there and they want to have these same small businesses and stick with the vibe of St Pete Beach. And you know I mean. Facts are, we can't afford the flood insurance. It's ridiculous. And we're not alone. There's so many other people who can't afford it either.

Speaker 3: 19:48

And so we're trying to organize, or we are organizing, an event. It's going to be a love boat theme because, since we're the helm and we love our nautical themes, so we're going to do a love boat theme. And you know we're going to hold this event at Tampa Bay Watch. They have graciously donated their space to us so that we can use it. We have a partnership with Tampa Bay Watch because we recycle our oyster shells with them. We do a lot of volunteer work and events and stuff when we can with them, so it's great that they're giving back to us. But we are just trying to raise money to give out to keep these places on the beach.

Speaker 1: 21:09

Is there a date yet?

Speaker 3: 21:11

November 15th. November 15th, so it's right around the corner.

Speaker 1: 21:15

Okay, and how does how would somebody find that? I mean, we're, we'll put it, we'll link it in the, in the, in the notes, but what, where, where do they go?

Speaker 3: 21:25

So I just found this out right before we got on the podcast actually. So I'm going to be putting it on our website, so it'll be under the events tab of our website and then it'll be on all of our social medias, now that we have a venue. So a venue and a date.

Speaker 1: 21:43

Excellent. I think that's great and you said it's a love boat theme like from the show 80 show.

Speaker 3: 21:49

I'll be.

Speaker 2: 21:49

Isaac.

Speaker 1: 21:51

Who's Captain Steubing?

Speaker 3: 21:53

Well, that's. That's probably going to be Michael, because my dream when I was a little girl was to be Julie, the cruise director. So here we go.

Speaker 2: 22:01

Soon we'll be making another run.

Speaker 1: 22:05

You know, I'll tell you what. What's really interesting about this whole thing is. You know everybody. You know John, our producer. You know he shot me a note last night and he said are we, you know, are we still doing a? Are we going to be in production today? And frankly, I said man, I don't even, I really don't want to, to be honest, I mean, I, I wasn't really ready to leave the house. You can hear my voice. I got everybody's flat. But I'll tell you, being getting out of the house and actually coming here setting up, doing the things we do, we even cooked today. We're not going to talk about it. This isn't the platform today for that, but you know, we're just trying to get back into the routine of things. You know, I think that's the healthy thing to do.

Speaker 2: 22:51

Agreed, agreed.

Speaker 2: 22:52

Yeah, normalcy is it brings back, you know, is a paramount for mental health. You know so and, getting through it all, I want to ask you guys, you know, what do you have to say to, for instance, the people all over the United States practically that told us the same thing in New Orleans, like why are you living in a bowl? Why don't you know if you're fraud prone? Why are you this? You know all these people have these things to say, but at the same time, you know you want to live your passions and what you built and at the same time, you also have, you know, insurance companies who make billions, if not trillions, of dollars worth of profits, but they can't insure you for a reasonable rate.

Speaker 2: 23:30

It's right now. It's a crisis precipitates change, you know, and it's, and you know I'd hate to see you guys rebuild and do everything you had to do, and this happened again to you. You know, so it's. You know I'd hate to see you guys rebuild and do everything you had to do, and this happened again to you. You know, so it's. There's, there's a. I think that with communication in that realm where everyone can build off of each other, you know that maybe there's a co-op, maybe there's some sort of thing like that where everyone you know puts into a thing, where it's run by, something other than something that's profitable. You know, you know, within a restaurant association or what have, what have you? But you know, have you guys thought about the fit, the rhetoric that you're going to be getting? Or for built rebuilding?

Speaker 3: 24:05

right back in the past, say again we've already gotten.

Speaker 3: 24:09

I mean, we have a dear friend who he lives. He lives maybe 10 houses from the helm and we've become friends because of that and they're they're all the time there and they he's had that house for 40 years and then he got another house in north carolina and they were going to do over his eye. This has been their dream, right? They're older now. This is, this is what they've lived for, and their house is destroyed and he's not coming back and and he's like you need to get out too. Like you, you should get out. Why? Why are you staying here? Well, we're staying here because we love it and we're passionate and this, this building, has made so many memories in the two and a half years that it's been in business that I just can't walk away. You know it's gonna. This may not happen for another hundred years. I may get in my car tomorrow and get killed, but I'm still going to get in my car tomorrow. You know, anything can happen.

Speaker 2: 25:08

And sadly, walking away only means that someone else is going to profit big time off of your loss. You know so if anyone should profit big time off of your loss it should be you, rather than someone else scooping up that property, pennies on the dollar on the coastline and doing whatever they do for the next 40 years until it happens again. God forbid it ever happens again. But sadly, you know, sadly, a hundred year storm happens every five years now. So you know we get to just come. Everything seems to be changing but it takes a community, especially the restaurant community, because they're probably the most diligent people ever and the most diehard people ever. So you know I'm happy to get into the discussion after all this happens and see how there can be insurance programs and co-ops or whatever it may be, where everybody kind of builds off of each other to protect each other. You know.

Speaker 3: 25:54

Yeah, that's a brilliant idea Great idea.

Speaker 2: 25:57

Great idea.

Speaker 1: 25:59

You know, to follow up real quick on that. Where do you go? You can't go to the mountains, right? You can't go out west. You get earthquakes, fires, you get fires. You get hurricanes here, tornadoes in the middle states, snowstorms, nor'easters in the northeast. Where do you go? Where do you go? Where do you go?

Speaker 2: 26:21

It's all the same we come to New Orleans and then, when it happens in New Orleans, we go to St Pete.

Speaker 2: 26:24

You know, we come to it just I mean seriously, though I mean it's like you have people who believe in each other and believe in each other's passions. I mean, to me that's kind whatever else, insurance companies you can't. You know, corporate America doesn't give a shit. Sorry, doesn't care, but sadly it's the truth. So we have to rely on each other and in this industry, like I said before I'm repeating myself we are the most diehard people, so very much so.

Speaker 3: 26:52

A thousand percent. I mean, no one understands this business until you're in it and then you realize it's like you. You give your everything to be here, you know we're a bunch of masochists.

Speaker 1: 27:04

You really are really looking for the. We all want our lashings here I guess you know, I was telling somebody.

Speaker 3: 27:13

We were recently interviewed by tampa bay times and I told them I was. People think that you're a restaurateur and they're like oh, they own a restaurant, they they're loaded. It's like you're. You're not like. You do this because you love hospitality, you love taking care of people and serving people and that's that's what you do. You don't do this for a million dollars, that's for certain.

Speaker 1: 27:38

Yeah, definitely I don't know. I mean, what are you hearing from the insurance companies? What are you hearing from the contractors? What's your next step?

Speaker 3: 27:49

so insurance is? You know they're flood trumps all. So if you don't have flood insurance and you're just out of luck, you you know. So we don't have anything that's going to cover anything that we're going through. Contractors have been pretty, I would say. They're reaching out.

Speaker 3: 28:09

Yeah, they're reaching out Pretty obtainable to get a contractor right now. I don't think for the most part, like everybody that we've spoken to, they have not been like gouging or trying to take advantage of people, like they're very sympathetic, they're all just trying to work together to rebuild everything you know. So I think that's that's been great. We've just been doing a ton of cleanup trying to get everything out of there.

Speaker 3: 28:36

Like I said, we lost every piece of equipment cooking, refrigeration, all of that stuff, freezers so we have to get we've gotten some out of the restaurant. We have to get help to get some of the other ones out that are bigger and have to move walls and all kinds of crazy things. But once we do that, you know, we're just trying to do what we can to raise money to buy new equipment and get going again. In the interim we're looking at a friend has a food truck and then he said he would come and bring it over so he can run his food truck out front and we can open our bar and at least people can have a place to go back to and, you know, feel like they're back at the helm. So we're looking at maybe doing something like that just to kind of get things going again.

Speaker 1: 29:28

You know they can try to bring that normalcy back to the beach well, when that happens, you let me know, because I want to come in and support that for sure. What That'd be great. So your daughter put together a GoFundMe for you guys, right.

Speaker 3: 29:46

Yes, our son and daughter.

Speaker 1: 29:49

Son and daughter. How do we find that that's on your. Instagram right.

Speaker 3: 29:54

It is on our Instagram. Yeah, it's on both of our socials.

Speaker 1: 29:57

And what's your social Home?

Speaker 3: 29:58

Tampa Baym, tampa Bay.

Speaker 1: 30:01

Helm, tampa Bay. Yeah, I'll put all your, I'll put everything, all your contact, you know, social contact info on in the description for the podcast, and when we post this on the socials too, we'll, we'll tag everything, what. So what do you need, are you? I mean, obviously, everything's a mess. Is there anything that you need specifically? Because here's the, you know, now's the time to say you never know who's going to listen to this or hear it. So if there's a call to action, what, what is it that's going to help you and what, what is it that's going to help the community?

Speaker 3: 30:32

I mean, our biggest need is to replace our equipment. You know, we can get open again and get back, to get back to normal. I mean that's, that's what we need the most.

Speaker 1: 30:44

Okay, Well, we're going to. We're going to put it out there. I appreciate the fact that, uh, that you all came on the program today, and I appreciate the fact that you know, Pooch, you stopped in today too. I hear everybody's voice. We're all beat up pretty good. What's your website, Heidi?

Speaker 3: 31:04

It's helmtampabaycom.

Speaker 1: 31:06

Excellent.

Speaker 3: 31:07

H-E-L-M.

Speaker 1: 31:08

Excellent.

Speaker 3: 31:09

Tampabaycom.

Speaker 1: 31:10

Perfect. I'm also well, you know what else I'm going to do too. I'm going to put up some links to some of the video that we did with you guys on the dishes and the cocktails. It's fun and I feel like we need to bring that spirit back. Yeah.

Speaker 3: 31:24

Yeah, great time, great time.

Speaker 1: 31:26

A hundred percent. So we'll push that out there to generate some, generate some, some positive energy. And again appreciate you guys being on the show.

Speaker 2: 31:36

God bless you guys Thank you so much God bless.

Speaker 1: 31:38

John pooch. God bless you guys. John Pooch, love you guys appreciate it. We are out. We'll see you next time.