Story & Photos by Brenda Eggert Brader
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Yummy, smooth, cool and tropical describes the fruit drinks that name the Tropical Smoothie Café in Winter Haven. Although business is fast paced with patrons after those smoothies, the café is filled at lunchtime so patrons can sample the salad and sandwich fare. Owned by Steve and Teresa Waters, the Tropical Smoothie Café employees fourteen people.

“Our first store opened in Bartow in January 2004,” said Teresa. “The landlord of this site thought this location would be a good one for a Tropical Smoothie and once he found me in Bartow, he wouldn’t give up trying to get me to open a store here. I kept hesitating, and then finally gave in.” Selling the Bartow store in May 2005, Teresa can now concentrate on running the Winter Haven store. “This one is plenty,” she laughed. “Once you have a store you have to be there all the time. This is the number one store for sales in Polk County. We are especially busy at lunch times.”

Interesting to this franchise store, Teresa shares that the other owners of Polk County Smoothies gather for cooperative meetings and actually share problems and become support for one another. They also decide how to spend their joint advertising budget and set store-item prices to be consistent. “We have a whole lot more money to spend when we can pool the advertising,” said Teresa. She said the road to her success was not smooth “ie.” It seems banks don’t like to take on a new, unproven restaurant business for a loan. “So we had to be creative in our financing,” said Teresa. “We used credit card limits on our personal accounts and other means,” she said. “The first year was remodeling the store and struggling. The second year we doubled sales and it has gone on from there.”

“We have a line from the front door and wonder where everyone is coming from.” There are a lot of office-type and medical office businesses downtown. Walking traffic brings patrons to the store for lunch. She says her busiest season is just coming up – summer. Smoothies are really refreshing on a hot and muggy summer day in Florida. She places orders for food items twice a week and has deliveries twice a week.

Teresa says there are 11 restaurants downtown and the more the merrier. “I think that one restaurant draws business to others. The Main Street Winter Haven is always planning events downtown and keep us all in the loop. When they have activities and festivals we reap business from the crowds they draw,” said Teresa. Smoothies are so popular because they are low in fat, healthful and less fattening. The most popular smoothie is the jetty punch – strawberries and bananas,” she said. “Paradise Point – strawberries, bananas and pineapple is the second most popular and another really special drink that is purchased a lot is the Cool Breeze made with nonfat yogurt, strawberries and pineapple.”

The franchise provides recipes for all the drinks and foods and Teresa goes to their Smoothies Web site and downloads her recipes. Corporate will be changing the menu this month. It recently added a Thai wrap that is popular. The day this writer ventured in again for lunch, the bacon, lettuce and tomato on sun-dried tomato bread was luscious. The new menu will, no doubt, keep many of the items currently served. Some include gourmet wraps Caesar, vegetables, sesame chicken; other assorted chicken flavors and turkey. The BLT was called a specialty sandwich and other choices were grilled cheese, tuna melt, ham melt and turkey and club sandwiches. Salads were in abundance including the old standby – Caesar salad and a chef salad with romaine lettuce, ham, turkey, provolone cheese, tomatoes and onions. For something different, try the Tortizzas that come in cheese, pepperoni, Hawaiian and barbecue chicken. Ghirardelli’s chocolates highlight two, to die for, smoothies – the Bahama Mama of strawberries, pineapples, coconut and white chocolate or the Almost Heaven featuring chocolate, bananas, peanut butter and nonfat yogurt.

The Winter Haven store is at 301 W. Central Ave., 863.295.7988; open 9 a.m. to 9 p.m.; Saturdays, 11 a.m. to 8 p.m. and closed on Sundays.