Ft Myers Beach - Good Neighbor
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Tune in to the Ft. Myers Beach – Good Neighbor Podcast, where the spirit of community meets the rhythm of island life. Each episode is a laid-back journey through heartfelt stories, local voices, and the connections that make our beach town so special. Whether you’re a resident or just dreaming of coastal breezes, let us be your guide to all things good in our neighborhood.
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Ft Myers Beach - Good Neighbor
FMBGN-BIZ-The Goodz-From Hardware to Heart on Fort Myers Beach
Resilience, community, and the sweetness of ice cream amid reconstruction—this is the story of Graham Belger and The Goodz on Fort Myers Beach.
Graham takes us on a journey through his roots as an island native who transformed a run-down hardware store into a thriving local business, only to face Hurricane Ian's devastating impact. With remarkable candor, he shares how his entrepreneurial instincts led him to partner with Love Boat Ice Cream, creating a unique business model that serves both practical needs and sweet cravings for locals and tourists alike.
The heart of this conversation reveals how small businesses become lifelines during disaster recovery. When major retailers remained closed after the hurricane, The Goodz stepped up as the first place where islanders could find cold drinks and essential supplies. Now operating from trailers while awaiting rebuilding, Graham maintains the same level of inventory and service despite significant challenges. His family's deep connection to the community—including his father who works as a handyman late into the night helping neighbors—exemplifies the interdependent nature of island life.
What stands out most is Graham's unwavering optimism despite personal sacrifices, including selling his beloved fishing boat to keep the business afloat. His story captures the essence of Fort Myers Beach's recovery: perseverance, adaptation, and maintaining the spirit of paradise even when the physical landscape has changed. Visit The Goodz for hardware needs, cool off with one of their 45 ice cream flavors, and witness firsthand how supporting local businesses strengthens the fabric of this resilient beach community.
The Goodz
Graham Belger
1698 Estero Blvd Fort Myers Beach, FL 33931
(239) 765-8900
Ft Myers Beach-Good Neighbor
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Welcome to the Fort Myers Beach Good Neighbor podcast, where the sun's always shining and the stories are even brighter. Each episode we bring you closer to the neighbors, local legends and beachside businesses that make Fort Myers Beach the slice of paradise we all love. Pull up a beach chair, grab a drink and let's meet the people who make this island feel like home. We want to send out some island love to Eric Tibbs from Edward Jones State Insurance USA and Home Well Care Services Fort Myers.
Speaker 2:Welcome to Fort Myers Beach, good Neighbors Today we have good neighbor Graham Belger. Belger.
Speaker 3:Belger.
Speaker 2:Belger from the goods, eh, but welcome. So excited to get to learn a little bit about you and share with our listeners a little bit about the goodz. For the people that don't know about the goods, right, why don't you explain a little bit about what you do?
Speaker 3:Well, I grew up here on Fort Myers Beach. I bought the goods. It was formerly called Jay's General Store. I bought that in 2013. It's been a hardware store going back to the 50s, so it's a pretty well-established hardware store. When I bought it it was kind of a little bit run down and needed some love, and so we bought that and brought it back to life, added a lot more of the gifts and retail items, things like that All the beach necessities and then I noticed I needed to have something to get people in there at nighttime. So that's when I was on Love Boat Ice Cream. I was bugging them for probably four or five months and they finally agreed to let me sell their ice cream and that immediately pretty much quadrupled my nighttime sales Once you try Love Boat Ice Cream you've got to come back every day of your vacation basically Kids begging for souvenirs or whatever else.
Speaker 3:So it just really helped with sales and no, it was a great thing and, you know, built the business for about 10 years until our buddy, ian, came along.
Speaker 2:Yeah.
Speaker 3:And kind of hit the reset button for me.
Speaker 2:So originally, why, fort Myer, you're not from here originally?
Speaker 3:you. No, I'm born and raised on the island, really okay, wow, it's hard to find people like you, but they're right there I was gonna say why fort myers beach? But hey, it makes sense if you live here yeah, yeah, my family, my parents were from wisconsin, but they moved here. I think it was like 79, and then they had me in 83 here, so ah, very nice where, where in?
Speaker 2:Wisconsin are they from?
Speaker 3:Sheboygan area.
Speaker 2:Okay, my parents were born and raised in Milwaukee. I was born in Wisconsin, okay.
Speaker 3:I'm a cheesehead, though I'm a big Packers fan. Right right, we all love our beer sausage cheese and Packers.
Speaker 2:Right, that's what it's all about yes sir. So and you had mentioned a little bit earlier but we all have challenges or storms that we go through. Is there something that's maybe positive, that's come out of what's happened here?
Speaker 3:You know, just getting to know the community better and being able to see how many people I've been able to help, you know, with just having the store open after the storm and just saving people a lot of time and energy and stress to, you know, not fight the traffic and all that sort of thing and get little things that they need. So, no, it's been good. It's been obviously a big learning experience for me and it hasn't been easy, that's for sure. But you know we're getting there, we're getting close to rebuilding, and so I'm real excited about that.
Speaker 2:Yeah, and it's been a process.
Speaker 3:Right now you're across the street from where you should be right yeah, yeah, basically catty corner to my lot where I'm at um, scott and jackie, uh, from the sea gypsy. They've been awesome, um, you know, having them as landlords and everything's worked out great there. Um, they've been amazing um. So, yeah, it's just uh, we're finally getting to the uh, I think I can see the light at the end of the tunnel.
Speaker 2:There you go you also touched on the sense of community and what this has done and bringing people together and helping each other out on the island, which is in itself, great a lot of people.
Speaker 3:You know it's been hard for a lot of people and it's been, uh, very challenging for everyone and just to see everybody kind of come together and work together to rebuild and, um, you know, I feel like they've supported me in a huge way and I've supported them, so it's really been good.
Speaker 2:Are there certain things that maybe stand out as far as if people want to help give back to the community or help support the community?
Speaker 3:It's hard to say, see, I get teared up about this stuff. No, I don't know anything in particular, just everybody. I mean everybody's been awesome. There's so many different people that come into the store and everybody always has, you know, really positive things to say about me and the business and just you know the island coming back to life. So it's. I don't know necessarily how to pinpoint anything, but you know it's just been a really good experience. It has been Through all the stress and everything else. There's been a lot of good too and it's been.
Speaker 2:It's been a long time coming, but every day you see something new popping up. It's been changing on the positive side right?
Speaker 3:yeah, no things are. The island's coming back to life. You know, the beach whale's almost finished. We got the beach bar here. These guys are awesome, so it's been great to get to know them and be neighbors with them Absolutely.
Speaker 2:So owning a business can be very demanding of your time, oh yeah, you live in Southwest Florida. So what do you enjoy doing when you get a moment of free time?
Speaker 3:Well before, ian, I was doing a lot of fishing. You know, it was great. Life was good. I had the business running like a well-oiled machine and you know I was finally to the point where I could actually enjoy, you know life and do things I enjoyed. I love fishing and golfing, things of that nature, and but yeah, the past three years it's been just on the grind. You know I haven't had much time to do anything. Had to sell my boat, you know, pay the engineers and get everything, keep it rolling.
Speaker 2:So, you know you spend a lot of time in the trailer out front here. Oh yeah.
Speaker 3:Yeah, it's been many, many hours out in the trailers there and you know we had the bigger trailer to begin with for the first two years and FEMA kind of forced me to get rid of that back in May. So that was a major adjustment. Having to come up with another temporary setup. You know it's not been easy but we, you know, luckily I awesome employees and we were able to pull it off. And the town, you know the town's been great. They've been on my side the whole time. You know FEMA's been the issue. It hasn't been a town. So no, everything has been going good and, yeah, just looking forward to rebuilding the breaking ground over there and getting it started.
Speaker 2:I hear you, so obviously you're not at the size that you're used to, but you still have enough supplies. What kind of things can people expect if they come by?
Speaker 3:Yeah, we've got all the necessities. You know I don't have, you know, the big items like Home Depot and those places carry, but I've got all the necessities as far as any plumbing, you know, fittings, all that kind of stuff that anybody needs to finish a job or to start a job. We've got good quantities of everything, All the plumbing, electrical, you know, tools, fasteners, super glue. We sell a lot of that. It seems like you know just all the necessities. Duct tape, lots of duct tape, just all the necessities. Duct tape, duct tape, right, a lot of duct tape. But yeah, no, I mean we've got two 24-foot trailers now that are fully stocked with all the hardware supplies, and I've got another trailer with all the 10-foot sticks of pipe and we have bags of concrete and mortar mix and you know all that kind of stuff.
Speaker 2:But we've got a pretty well covered. Yeah, you've got a good inventory. And you got the ice cream there, right oh?
Speaker 3:yeah, you can. We've got about 45 flavors of Love Boat ice cream, so that's a big hit with, I mean, the guys working too. They come in to buy something and they'll grab an ice cream too, to cool off a little bit. And obviously the tourists love the ice cream. So we do pretty well at nighttime with the ice cream and stuff.
Speaker 2:That's good, what are your?
Speaker 3:hours typically now. Um, right now we're 8 am to 10 pm every day. Um, obviously now it's back to school so we've noticed a pretty big drop off in customers. Um, pretty quiet here now. It'll be that way for the next month, month and a half like a ghost town here. So you know nighttime hours we might start closing around nine o'clock or something. But, um, yeah, I try to.
Speaker 1:You know we've got long hours because you never know, when something might break or you need to come and grab a, you know a plumbing fitting or whatever.
Speaker 3:So we've helped a lot of people in that regard too. Just grabbing stuff late night.
Speaker 2:I love it, love it, perfect so is there one thing you wish our listeners knew about the goods that maybe they wouldn't be too familiar with?
Speaker 3:Not necessarily. It's just a good family-owned business. Like I said, I'm a local. I mean that used to be my saying before the storm If we don't have it, you don't need it. We literally carry, I mean, and even in these trailers people are very surprised at what we have in there. I still have the little gift shop trailer with all your toiletries and medicines and all the necessities shampoo, shampoo things. People forget toothbrushes, you know, snacks, drinks. We were the first ones down here on the island after the storm where you could actually come and buy a cold gatorade or something you know.
Speaker 3:There was no, 7-elevens were all gone exactly publics took a while to reopen, so we were kind of the only thing here for to get you know things at the beginning. So that that was kind of cool.
Speaker 2:So if our listeners wanted to stop by check you out or needed some plumbing fixture in the middle of the night, how do they find you?
Speaker 3:Well, I mean, I guess I kind of let my website go away. I need to redo that. But we're on Facebook and stuff like that. I'm pretty good with checking that. If you ever send a message I'm quick to respond, that sort of thing. My dad's a handyman maintenance guy here on the island so he's pretty well-known around here and loved, and I see him driving around doing stuff at 10 o'clock at night too to help people out. So you know people, they can get a hold of us and we're here to help, so we don't mind that.
Speaker 2:And you can't miss it. You're right out in front of the beach bar here on the Surabula Bar.
Speaker 3:Yeah, you can't. It's hard to miss, Although it's been tough since we had to get rid of the bigger trailer. A lot of people they got used to seeing that double wide trailer there and my sales are down since we had to switch it over. A lot of people think the hardware store is gone.
Speaker 3:They don't realize that I still have everything I had there and these smaller trailers, and so I've kind of got signs all over the place and some people don't really read, so they'll pull in the driveway and then they'll start backing out.
Speaker 2:I have to run out there and chase them down what are you looking for?
Speaker 3:And it's hardware. It's gone. I'm like no, it's still here. So it's been a challenge, but you know I'm used to it by now.
Speaker 2:There you go. Well, hopefully we can help get the word out. Any last words for our listeners today.
Speaker 3:Well, just stop by the goods, get some ice cream, grab your hardware supplies, obviously. Come to the beach bar, have a beer. They're rocking it over here. That's one good thing, too, about being here I always get to hear the music it's always got good music so it's in that mood, yeah it's always a good vibe. So, yeah, just support the beach businesses everybody. We need it.
Speaker 2:So that's about it very good, graham, it's been a pleasure getting to know you. Thank you for being such a good neighbor here on on the beach.
Speaker 3:We'll see you out here on the beach soon, right yeah, definitely, maybe fishing, right yeah, I can't wait for that. All right, take care, all righty, thank you.
Speaker 1:Thanks for tuning in to the Fort Myers Beach Good Neighbor Podcast, where community meets paradise. If you loved what you heard, share it, stay salty and keep being a good neighbor. Also, to nominate your favorite neighbors, local legends, heroes or island businesses to be on the show, go to CaboWaboJim. com. That's CaboWaboJim. com, or call 239-427-4100. We want to send out some island love to Eric Tibbs from Edward Jones State Insurance USA and Home Well Care Services Fort Myers. They are the businesses that allow us to share the soul of our community with every listener. From local stories to the positive vibe of island life. Here's to celebrating all that makes Fort Myers Beach the slice of paradise we all love.