When I read on Facebook that Double Branch Artisanal Ales, located at 5956 Wesley Grove Blvd. in The Village at The Grove, was under new ownership, I was excited to meet the new owner and learn about his plans for the place — even though I’ve never been a big beer drinker.
Well, after meeting the new owner, who goes by Dee (shown here with his friendly bartender/team member Jenna), and seeing how he’s already opened up Double Branch’s interior, including creating a window into the sizable working brewery, added more TVs (including a 190” projection screen) and upgraded the entire look of the place, I have to say that Dee is on the right track.
He’s also added several more beer taps (with a rotating selection of excellent craft beers and “a new commitment to sustainable brewing practices”), with live entertainment, trivia nights, brewery tours and fun community events all coming up soon.
Dee also says that although you can bring in food from The Grove’s restaurants and enjoy them with his tasty beers, seltzers, ciders and white, red and rose wines on tap, he plans to bring in “maybe 20-30 total items” from Falabella Family Bistro across the way sometime in the future. In the meantime, he also plans to host a Grand Opening event sometime later this month, but had not yet announced it as we went to press with this issue, so check our “Neighborhood News” Facebook page for that announcement soon.
For more info about Double Branch Artisanal Ales, which is open every day except Monday (although Dee says he does plan to open Mondays for Monday Night Football games), call (813) 492-880 or visit DoubleBranch.beer — and please tell Dee I sent you!
Taylor Gardner Gutters owner Taylor Gardner is proud of his new location in Dade City, but he and his crew (photos below) are still installing and repairing gutters at homes and businesses in Wesley Chapel and New Tampa, too. (Photo by Charmaine George)
Although Gardner Gutters had been serving the Tampa Bay area since Ed Gardner established it as a small business in Lutz in 2000, Ed’s son Taylor has grown the business immensely since taking it over in 2020 and renaming it Taylor Gardner Gutters.
It’s grown so much, in fact, that the business outgrew its previous location in Land O’Lakes and recently moved to four acres in Dade City.
“We have 15 vehicles on the road every day,” Taylor says. “Our front two acres are filled with trucks, trailers and an employee parking area. It’s more space than we need right now, but I know we’ll end up growing into it.”
Taylor Gardner Gutters installs and repairs gutters, soffits and facias, and also offers gutter cleaning, which keeps the gutters on your home or business working properly and in good repair.
Taylor says that adding gutters is the least expensive thing you can do to protect the value of your home, ensuring that Florida’s famous summer downpours don’t destroy its foundation or even its aesthetic upgrades.
“Protecting the foundation of your home is the main purpose of gutters,” he says, “but they also protect your paint and will help your grass and sod last longer, too. Gutters protect anything on the outside of your house to help it stay in great shape for as long as possible.”
Without gutters, Taylor says water is much more likely to settle at the base of your home’s foundation. With that saturation, the water can cause erosion to the side of the home, leading to cracks in the stucco and window ledges and forming unsightly trenches. Water under the home also can cause wood floors in the home to pucker or pop.
Taylor first joined the business to help his father after serving in the Marines for nine years, including a tour of duty in Iraq. He used his experience and his Business Administration degree from Liberty University in Lynchburg, VA, to start a different career, but came home when his dad needed his help after receiving a cancer diagnosis.
Taylor took over the business when Ed passed away, and Taylor’s older brother, Brandon, who had decades of experience working with their dad, led installations. Unfortunately, Brandon was then diagnosed with cancer as well and passed away just eight months later.
So now, Taylor continues the legacies of his dad and older brother, running the business in a way that would make them both proud.
Photo provided by Taylor Gardner
“Our installers are great, and we have several who have been with the company more than 15 years,” Taylor explains. “They know exactly what they’re doing.”
That’s important to Taylor because his company offers a lifetime warranty on its installations. He says this is what sets Taylor Gardner Gutters apart from its competitors.
Company policy is that any customer who experiences a warranty issue will have the problem inspected within 48 hours and fixed as soon as possible — no matter how many years it’s been since the gutters were originally installed.
“One of reasons we’ve been successful in this business is because we always answer the phone, especially if there’s a problem after installation,” Taylor explains.
He contrasts that with many of his competitors, who are often just one-person companies doing as many jobs as they can, without employees to keep up with other things, such as going back and fixing something if it isn’t right.
“My focus from the beginning has been to really hit customer service as our number one priority,” Taylor says. “We give people what they ask for at a very reasonable price.”
Taylor says some of his customers have been coming back to the company for two decades, since his dad first started the business.
The company’s lifetime no-leak guarantee is a another unique way Taylor builds those lifelong relationships.
“All gutters will leak eventually,” he says. “Mine won’t leak for at least 10 years, but if they do and you still live in that house, call us and we’ll fix it.”
He has one team that is dedicated to only doing repair work, even if it’s not a job originally done by Taylor Gardner Gutters. The repair team also handles any warranty calls that come in.
“After the hurricanes last year, that team was very busy,” Taylor says, with homes that had a gutter or piece of soffit that came down. “Nine times out of ten, it’s not something we did wrong — sometimes it’s because a customer has done no maintenance — but as a courtesy we still take care of the problem. They then tell their neighbors how much they love us and how good we are, and that’s really good for our business.”
It’s also good for his business that there is such a construction boom in our area. Taylor Gardner Gutters also works with several homebuilders to install gutters on newly built homes, including many of the new neighborhoods in Wesley Chapel, such as The Ridge, Winding Ridge, Valencia Ridge and all David Weekley Homes throughout the area.
Photo provided by Taylor Gardner
Those builders are growing in other areas, too, such as further north in and around Brooksville. And, Taylor says his business is expanding into Lakeland, which he describes as “even crazier in construction than Wesley Chapel.”
In addition to helping homeowners, the company installs, repairs and cleans gutters on commercial building for business owners.
Taylor Gardner Gutters just did its largest job ever, replacing gutters at the CENTCOM building at MacDill Air Force Base.
“It was a huge job on a seven-story building that took us four weeks,” Taylor says.
Taylor Gardner Gutters has 200+ reviews on Google, with an average rating of 4.8 stars out of 5. Recently, Scott Hutchison said the company’s crew “arrived on time and did a fantastic, professional, careful, and respectful job of adding new gutters to my two-story metal roof.”
Scott added that he highly recommends Taylor Gardner Gutters, writing, “[The] house looks great! No more water pooling up near my foundation.”
Taylor Gardner Gutters is now located at 10301 U.S. Hwy. 301 in Dade City and serves homeowners in Hillsborough, Pasco, Hernando, Polk and Citrus counties, including New Tampa and Wesley Chapel. For more info, visit TaylorGardnerGutters.com or call or text (813) 515-0844.
(L.-r.) Reggie, Ryder, Erica & Ryleigh invite you to check out Final Touch Quality Cleaners, which will make sure every inch of your home, apartment, business or Airbnb will be sparkling when they leave. (All photos by Charmaine George)
Reggie Wakefield and Erica Poniatowski, the owners of Final Touch Quality Cleaners, have become mine and Jannah’s friends over the course of the last two years, since they took over cleaning our previous apartment and especially, since they have been cleaning our larger, new apartment at the Silversaw Apartments.
Jannah first met both Erica and Reggie at her Business Networking International (BNI) meetings. Erica joined the group and we all hit it off instantly.
Both Erica and Reggie have cleaned our place, but Erica is more focused on her career as a Realtor® with Great Western Realty in Tampa, while Reggie…well, I’ll let him tell you.
“I was cleaning houses and apartments in New York City when I was seven or eight years old, when my mom used to take me and one of my sisters (Brittany) with her. We were both young, so we thought she was just doing favors for our neighbors, but we later found out she had made a business out of it!”
He adds, “We were both kind of chunky kids, so we loved cleaning food trucks because they would pay us with free food!,” he laughs.
And, although Reggie got into the home alarm business when he and Erica graduated from the same high school in southern New Jersey, he says, “I’ve just always loved to clean! I get a feeling of satisfaction when I leave someone’s home or business sparkling.”
So, when both he and Erica made the decision to move from New Jersey to Florida, after both of them left different alarm companies, it was Reggie who pushed for them to start their own cleaning service in the Sunshine State, especially since Brittany, the sister he used to clean with when they were kids, already owned a successful “sister” cleaning company in Norfolk, VA.
The couple ultimately settled in nearby Lutz and Erica became the public face of the new Final Touch Quality Cleaners — despite Reggie’s winning smile and hard-to-resist personality — so he could focus on the cleaning side while she ran the business and handled the billing and marketing.
“Even though she’s great at it, I know that cleaning isn’t Erica’s thing,” Reggie says. “When Erica said she wanted to get her real estate license, I was happy for her to go for it.”
In the meantime, Final Touch has continued to grow, with all-5-star reviews on 16 reviews on Google. Customer Jackie P., in a 5-star Google review, says, “I’ve used Final Touch Quality Cleaners for everything I have! My home and my business! They do phenomenal work and their detailed approach is very reassuring. They also make our appliances look like new each time they leave and we always have a great smelling house afterwards. 10/10. Will always recommend and use.”
One thing I’ve noticed when Reggie cleans our apartment is how methodical he is. We haven’t had an actual office for him to clean, but I can imagine how he would be able to expand what he does for us for a much larger space.
Speaking of larger spaces, after Erica and Reggie met Rock & Brews general manager Kareem Nelson at a BNI function at the restaurant a year ago, they immediately were hired to clean it.
“Kareem told me they had an in-house cleaning crew they weren’t happy with,” Reggie says. “I told him ‘I got you’ and we’ve been cleaning it ever since. I’m sad they’re closing it, not just because we’re losing a commercial client, but because Kareem has been so great to work with.”
So, as of now, Reggie says he and Erica are focused on finding another big commercial account to replace Rock & Brews.
“We have a crew and we all work the commercial accounts together to get it done — not just fast, but right!,” he says. “We’ll always make sure your office, restaurant or other place of business always looks as good as your home when we finish cleaning.” Reggie and Erica also are happy to clean your Airbnb, and provide move-in, move-out and post-construction cleans, too.
Final Touch also is looking to hire additional cleaners after an amazing occurrence with part of their crew. “We had a couple working for us but they recently won a million dollars on a scratch-off ticket!,” Reggie says. “At first, they said they would keep on working…after all, a million dollars isn’t worth as much today as it once was… but they ended up leaving anyway.”
Erica and Reggie have a daughter named Ryleigh and a son named Ryder and you can see how much they love their little family.
“We’ve got to make it work for them,” Reggie says, “and I have no doubt we will.”
New clients who mention this storywill receive 10% off their first clean with Final Touch Quality Cleaners. For more information and a free estimate, call (813) 530-5591 or email FinalTouchQC@gmail.com.
It was only 3-1/2 months ago that we were the first to tell you about the opening of Sushi Bowls by Kazoku Sushi (photo below) in the Pebble Creek Collection, but co-owner Cristina Chanquin admits that Sushi Bowls closed abruptly a few weeks ago. She cited issues with finding a solid team to work at the New Tampa location and a need to “focus on the foundation of our business,” as Cristina and her husband Sergio also own Sushi House in Ybor City.
“But, we do serve our bowls at the cafés at both the AdventHealth and BayCare hospitals in Wesley Chapel every Thursday,” she says.
So, if you (like yours truly) were a fan of Sushi Bowls, you can still grab a tasty bowl at those local hospitals.
Is It Sushi Time Yet?
But, speaking of sushi, if you’ve been wondering what happened to Ginza Endless Sushi & Hibachi next to LA Fitness at 6417 E. County Line Rd. (top photo), it’s been replaced with another Japanese restaurant — Sushi Time Hibachi, Ramen & Seafood.
Now open less than three weeks as this issue is reaching you, the new owners want everyone to know that Sushi Time is not another all-you-care-to-eat place, nor does it offer teppanyaki/hibachi tables in the dining room.
It is, however, a reasonably priced, full-service, sushi-focused, sit-down Japanese restaurant with nearly 80 different sushi and sashimi options. Of course, Jannah and I first had to try — and gave thumbs-up to — the California roll shown above left), but we’ll be back for more.
But, for those of you who, like us, enjoy Japanese/Asian appetizers like fried (or steamed) pork gyoza dumplings, spring and egg rolls, we did try all of the above and enjoyed them all — especially the extra-crispy pork egg rolls.
We also sampled the chicken hibachi (which is still available, but made in the kitchen) shown right, which was loaded with large chunks of chicken and fresh veggies and served with white or pretty good fried rice. There also are steak and shrimp hibachi options and Asian favorites like Mongolian chicken or beef, General Tso’s chicken, beef or chicken with broccoli and more. For more info about Sushi Time, call (813) 364-4545 or visit SushiTimeTampa.com and please tell the owners I sent you! — GN
I’ll admit that the first time I happened to walk into the Kangaroo Express gas station at 17519 Bruce B. Downs (BBD) Blvd. in New Tampa last year, I was actually looking for the Paris Baguette bakery — which is now located across BBD, but hadn’t opened yet.
But, what I found was a section of the gas station’s convenience store that was a Cuban-style bakery that actually was open — known as CAO Bakery & Café— and you were definitely hit with a whiff of delicious baked goods in a large display case as you walked towards that case.
“OK, great,” I thought, “I can always go for a guava pastelito, a beef or chicken empanada and/or a slice of cake — or all of the above.”
CAO stands for Cuban American Original, but it also is the actual last name of one of the co-owners, Antonio Cao, who is a third-generation baker. Antonio and his partner and childhood friend, Carlos de Varona opened their first bakery together around 2000, in a very Cuban area of Miami called Westchester, not too far from Little Havana.
Today, there are 20 CAO locations, mostly in South Florida — although there also is a full-service CAO Bakery on W. Hillsborough Ave. in Tampa — with more on the way. The BBD location is corporate-owned, but franchises are available, according to Antonio’s wife Yvette, who handles the marketing of the brand.
“Most of our other locations are full-service bakery-restaurants of anywhere from 2,000-4,000 square feet,” Yvette says. “We were looking for a spot in the Wesley Chapel area and found that the previous vendor at this location had left, so we decided to open what we call an ‘express’ location there as a test market.”
Even so, I had no idea how huge the menu at the New Tampa CAO was until I spoke with Yvette. Yes, there is a tremendous selection of freshly baked (from frozen) sweet and savory treats that are delivered from Miami to Tampa twice a week. But wait, there’s more.
“You can tell that everything is freshly baked on premises,” Yvette says. “Once people find us, they tell us they love us!”
And, despite being open for less than a year at this location, almost all of CAO’s Google reviews are 5-stars out of 5, including customer Omar Rodriguez-Hazan, who says he drives an hour from South Lakeland at least once a week, “to enjoy the flavors of Miami. The food and service are awesome. Don’t be fooled by the fact they are located in a gas station. They are a top-notch bakery which I highly recommend!”
As for the non-pastry food options, CAO has delicious bacon, egg and cheese sandwiches (below left), a twist on the popular Media Noche sandwich called Medio Dia (above right; it’s a classic guava and cheese pastelito filled with ham and melted Swiss) and even a churrasco steak plate (top photo) of which customer Jason Hicks said in his 5-star Google review, “The meat was tender and the chimichurri sauce was great. The Cuban sandwich was good also and the prices are reasonable.”
Other sandwiches include the frita CAO (a Cuban-style cheeseburger that is a house-made blend of beef, pork & chorizo, topped with crispy shoestring papitas, Swiss cheese and sazon aioli) and the Croqueta club (signature croquetas de la casa, layered with sliced turkey, crisp bacon, melted American cheese, lettuce, tomatoes & mayo) — and many more.
Other satisfied customers have loved CAO’s catering options, like trays of assorted pastelitos and croquetas shown above.
There also are more American dessert favorites like strawberry cheesecake (bottom photo on next page), carrot cake and Latin dessert staples like flan, cuatro leches, panetelita dulce de leche, flan cheesecake and so much more.
And, many customers, including yours truly, rave about CAO’s café con leche, including Oscar Olivera, who called it, “The best café con leche in Tampa, no questions about it!!!”
For more information about CAO, call (813) 280-9640 or visit CAOBakeryCafe.com to order pickup or delivery online. If you use code “CAOTAMPA” when you order, you’ll save $5 off any order of $20 or more. Or, mention the ad below or this story when you order in person to receive the discount. And, please tell them I sent you!
