Steve Paschopoulos has 28 years in the produce business. He recently branched out from his family's longtime roadside stand in Palm Harbor and moved down the road closer to home at 2058 Bayshore Boulevard, just in time for the Florida strawberry season. Paschopoulos, 43, of Dunedin said he loves the area he calls home and figured he'd give Steve's Produce & Market a try. His mostly indoor, family-run produce store carries an array of fruits and vegetables from Florida, California, South America and Mexico.  The in-season tomatoes are from Ruskin and the green peppers are also grown in Florida…

New owners of Jolli Mons Grill — Danny Falcone, a New York Italian, and Winsil Falcone, his Filipino wife — may have very different favorite fare, but one thing they both agree on is fresh, homemade food. Like Jolli menu items wontons and wild berries, you might question the Falcones as a perfect pairing, but Winsil, with her bright smile and Pacific breeze hinted accent, matches his bravado with her own special charm. The couple met almost a decade ago while Falcone was on vacation in the Philippines. It was love at first sight, but it would take almost two years to convince U.S. …

You've been getting to know some of Dunedin's small business owners with us throughout the year in a regular feature we call "Meet the Moms & Pops." Many local business owners have shared the story of their successes and struggles. They have intrigued us, inspired us, and captured our hearts. And today, as we look back on 2012, we highlight the 10 stories that you loved the most.  Of course, you can read the stories behind all the local merchants we've featured anytime you want. Visit them here on a special page we dedicated just for them! Or do them a big favor: find their shop in the …

Marguerite Allison is known for her caring, but straight-forward, no-nonsense approach to life. It's become the hallmark of how Allison runs Marguerite’s Cafe & Catering and how she has come to embrace her employees. She seems perfectly equipped for what has become a calling: helping people touched by alcohol or drug addiction to rebuild clean, sober lives. Allison mixes a structured and supportive working environment with a pinch of tough love. It's a combination in which her employees thrive. “It’s not something I advertise, but yes God sends me people,” Allison humbly reveals.  Allison …

Opportunity knocked twice for Philip Renaud and wife Tammy. The couple recently acquired The Living Room and The Dunedin Smokehouse restaurants on Main Street in downtown Dunedin. Renaud has worked for the last 12 years in the Boston area as a wine consultant and restaurant designer specializing in custom wine cellars. He said a few years ago he and his wife started looking to acquire their own restaurant. The couple's dream was to find "a small place near the water on Florida’s west coast," where he could feature some of his special recipes and share his love of good wine. The couple started…

Eileen Roski's shop on Broadway did more than bring colorful cotton fabric to Dunedin quilters. It stitched together a sisterhood. The owner of Florida’s largest quilting store, Rainbow's End Quilt Shoppe, across from Sam’s Seafood, didn't set out to carry over 25,000 bolts of 100 percent cotton fabric, but Roski’s life hit a snag in 1982 that ultimately brought her sister and niece into business together. To make more money, the company she worked for was moving out of state, but she did not want to move with them. Roski imagined that it was possible to follow a new pattern in her life. She …

Imagine it.  A safe, relaxing place where your child can play with their friends and parents can sit with other parents and enjoy a healthy meal. The kind of place where the only option for kids isn’t fried mystery meat, and you don't have to worry about the children getting bored and acting out. Sounds nice doesn't it? Well, recently opened Sweet Peas Café in downtown Dunedin has created the impossible. Owner Danielle Pastore tried to think of everything a family would want. The menu focuses on local and organic ingredients and all items come in either kid sizes or adult size. Pastore also …

Move over Paris Hair Design, there's a new Italian restaurant on the block. The owners of Paris Hair Design are opening a new Italian restaurant, Pensare, in downtown Dunedin at the former longtime location of their hair salon. Pensare, pronounced pen-SAR-ay, is an Italian verb meaning to think and owners Michel and Robin Rey’s desire to build a menu so delicious that when you are thinking Italian, you will always think Pensare. The word Pensare also has great meaning to the Reys because they have been thinking of, and thinking on bringing a restaurant to Dunedin since they bought the stretch…

Walt Wickman points at the boat slip directly below a table at his outdoor restaurant. “You can’t get more local than this,” he says. The boat slip houses the 38-foot Wing Shot from which Wickman buys much of the fish served and sold at Olde Bay Café and Dunedin Fish Market. On a recent, steamy Saturday morning, the boat, captained by local fisherman Danny deLiesseline, comes in after almost a week in the Gulf of Mexico. The captain and his assistant unload hundreds of pounds of fresh grouper and red snapper into coolers to be brought into the Dunedin Fish Market. The cooks there fillet them …

Al Barrett has been sewing boating accessories for 30 years, but only in the last 16 has he found his true calling. The salty sailor still creates the cushions, covers, and other marine canvas products as he always has, but now he takes his profits from his nautical upholstery business, Dunedin Canvas Works near Eddie's Bar & Grill, to fund his charity Threads of Hope.  Threads of Hope donates foot-powered sewing machines and provides education in making patterns, alterations and garment construction to widows and orphans. The foundation has sent sewing machines to 14 countries across the …

Neither colon cancer nor financial strain is keeping the owners of Two Lions Winery from their vision of a bright future in Dunedin. Rose Post and Kevin Zylstra are building a name for themselves as expert wine makers at Two Lions Winery, tucked cozily in a shopping center on Main Street near Belcher Road.  Six of their wines have received silver and bronze medals over the last two years. But the couple is keeping its eye on winning gold, despite Zylstra’s diagnosis with stage IV colon cancer last September, discovered during a routine colonoscopy.  When Post and Zylstra opened a few years …

The hottest trend in healthy food is olive oil tasting shops and two have opened in Dunedin in the last two months: Middle Earth Olive Oil Company and Kalamazoo Oil Company. Vanessa Wilks and Nancy Zareczny, owners of Middle Earth Olive Oil Company, were retired, ladies who lunch before they opened their specialty food shop in Westfield Countryside Mall in 2011. This past July, after a year in the mall, they moved to the Broadway Shops in downtown Dunedin. Wilks and Zareczny felt that the Broadway Shops offered a more casual atmosphere where they could host tasting parties with live DJs, and …

Rob Pereira decided to take a chance. The longtime local cook and father of three has spent the past decade working in the kitchens of Dunedin's favorite restaurants, including Kelly's, The Dunedin Smokehouse, Serendipity Cafe and Dunedin Brewery. He loved cooking food for people. he says. After all, people need proper nourishment, and he feels a certain privilege in bringing that to people. But the late night hours are wearing on him, he says. Starting Sept. 3, he's delivering food to people in another way — via bicycle.  Pereira officially launches his startup "Dunedin Is Hungry" on Monday…

Nancy Carney wasn't always the Motown-singing and dancing proprietor of Main Street fashion accessory store Nancy's Fancy. A quick peak inside her downtown shop shows tables of jewelry and purses organized meticulously by color. Motown hits feed her daily store soundtrack. Sometimes you may even catch her spontaneously dancing. But a year and half ago, Carney was far from feeling that fancy. One spring morning in 2011, Carney drove to her sales manager job at a large anti-virus software company. She arrived at work that day and noticed her boss and good friend was not in the office, which was…

Kalamazoo Olive Company, a gourmet grocery store that specializes in premium olive oils and vinegars, recently opened a shop on County Road 1 in Dunedin.  “Olive oil is a $700 billion a year business,” owner James Ryan said. “But this is the only place around where people can get fresh, pressed oils.” Ryan's store is the second location for the St. Petersburg-based company, which originally opened in 2010 on Central Avenue. He imports olive oils from all over the world, including Italy, Chile, Argentina and Venezuela. Ryan claims his oils and vinegars are better for you because they are “…

For Larry Lipke, educating children was not enough.  The longtime owner of Pet Safari left his job as a Christian school teacher to follow his childhood dream of owning a pet store.  He wanted to teach people to love and respect animals.  And after nearly 30 years into it, he has carefully and steadily created a Main Street pet shop that is nationally-known, especially for its care for exotic sloths and other animals. Lipke met longtime store manager George Talmadge about 15 years into his business. Talmadge was a Dunedin Parks & Recreation employee tasked with coordinating the city's annual …

In 1996, Lynn Thorn left her job with Norfolk Southern Railroad and moved across the pond to Borehamwood, England, to marry the man she loved. Just 18 months later she was a widow. Thorn had a good job with T-Mobile at the time, and though she was still reeling with grief, she loved her new country and decided to stay. Eventually, she took a buyout but remained in England as a change management consultant for a myriad large corporations. A nagging thought stayed in the back of her mind: “I kept thinking that I would love to have my own business,” Thorn said. She started looking for a business…

The journey to small business ownership is as much a spiritual as it is entrepreneurial for the Vogts. “She has always wanted a place like this,” Barry "Bear" Vogt says. Bear and wife Kathy Vogt opened downtown metaphysical shop Enchanted Spirits, which is tucked on the cozy corner of Broadway and Scotland Avenue, on the fall equinox of 2010. The shop offers tools to help guide people in their search for spiritual knowledge and enlightenment “Spirituality should not be something that is hidden or be ashamed of, and the businesses that guide you on your path shouldn’t be either,” Kathy Vogt …

Deb Gelerter vividly remembers her first visit to Honeymoon Island. “I knew I had to live here as soon as my feet hit the sand,” Gelerter, an artist who owns Lucie-Mae’s Beach House. While her piggies sunk into the granules, she began brainstorming how to move away from the corporate life that was ticking-off its vacation days. “No other place speaks to me like Honeymoon does," she says. "I try to explain how it makes me feel, but I can’t … so I paint.”   Gelerter began creating a working studio to sell her paintings. But she wanted to fill more than just the walls. “A few years ago, I …

Leticia Estep spent her life in retail, starting at age 14. Now she is the part owner of a women's downtown consignment boutique, Twice as Nice.  “You have to pay attention in life because you may be learning skills that will help you later,” Estep says. She worked for Grendha, a Brazilian shoe company, and did trade shows across the United States. She worked as a retail CEO’s assistant, and later, in fragrance for L’Oreal and Liz Claiborne. She first became passionate for consignment stores when she was looking for work after her divorce. She found a part-time position at Second Time Around…