Rachael Chalupsky was ready for Hurricane Milton .
Or so she thought.
“We were better prepared for Milton than we were for (Hurricane) Ian,” Chalupsky, who co-owns The Perfect Cup on Matlacha with her husband Rich, said. “We raised everything up. We thought we did a good job.”
What she found the day after the storm came through left her “unpleasantly surprised.”
“I wasn’t very happy,” she said. “We had about a foot of water. Almost all of the coolers had some water even though we raised them up. The tornado left a hole in the back wall and that’s how the water got in. We had the doors pretty well blocked.”
Her warm and friendly breakfast and lunch spot just west of the Matlacha Pass Bridge bounced back quickly.
“Everyone came in and helped every day,” she said. “That really helped get us through. We knew what we had to do. It was way faster than it was after Ian. It’ll be even faster next time.”
It took two weeks to reopen after Milton as opposed to five weeks after Ian. And despite it all, Chalupsky has no intention of giving up and calling it quits.