Toasted Monkey owner offers to pay employees to clean up storm damage

ST. PETE BEACH, Fla. (WFLA) — Several businesses are unable to open their doors in St. Pete Beach, leaving employees without a paycheck.

One restaurant owner is doing all he can to keep his workers employed.

Toasted Monkey is a popular spot along St. Pete Beach, but now it looks completely different. There used to be a bar, walls, and tons of tables and chairs.

Helene left the beach bar and sports grill with nothing but damage on the inside.

“We had our doors and windows blown out, the bars blown away, we lost all of our products, all of our furniture, everything like that, that insurance doesn’t cover,” Matthew Vario said.

Vario owns Toasted Monkey, as well as Buoys and Rick’s Reef in the area. He also has another restaurant in a beach next door, called The Reef-Madeira Beach.

Vario said Toasted Monkey took the brunt of the damage from the hurricane, and said a handful of his employees lost all of their belongings, and now their incomes.

“We’ve been putting them to work rather than hiring outside demo crews, and cleanup crews, just to give them some money and some positive moving forward,” he said.

One of those employees who is taking him up on his offer is Jennah Newton.

“I lost all my furniture, my apartment needs to be repaired, so finding a place to go while all the repairs are being made is definitely a stressor, and not having income right now,” she said.

Newton has been with the vibrant colored restaurant and bar for a year and a half. Instead of serving drinks behind the bar, she and other employees are shoveling, sweeping, and trying to put back the pieces of the place they love to work at.

“I really can’t believe how much has been done, it really looked like there was no return when I first saw this place,” Newton said.

The restaurant is doing all it can to get through this time of true devastation.

“Really, the big thing is the billing department getting us permits. It’s going to be the biggest help to us, the community, to getting stuff back to as normal as possible and getting people back to work. So, we desperately need permits from them,” Vario said.

It’s all hands-on deck at the Toasted Monkey. Nobody is sure when they will be able to reopen, but everyone is working as quickly as they can.

Vario said the community can also help by coming to visit, especially any people who live outside of the beach, when they reopen.

Two of Vario’s other restaurants, Rick’s Reef and Buoys, will be serving the public by Friday.

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