Women lead next generation of SWFL family businesses

While family-owned businesses tend to be bought out by the oldest son in line to inherit them, daughters also are taking larger roles, if not outright ownership. Here’s a look at some Southwest Florida women who are playing prominent roles in the management, ownership or both of a few family-owned businesses.

Cassandra Stready

Cleveland Bass Movers, Naples

The operations manager spent 18 years working for Marriott in various roles, including assistant general manager, operations manager and auditor. In 2019, just before the COVID-19 pandemic began, Stready returned to Naples to help with the family business. The pandemic prompted her to stay for the long run as operations manager of the full-service home moving company.

“I took a lot of the things I learned from Marriott and put it into our company,” Stready says of certain corporate financial efficiencies. “My dad, he’s semi-retired. He says he’s retired, but he still comes into the office every day. My brothers and I run the operations now. It’s run by the third generation.”

Juliana Meek

Harmon-Meek Gallery

Juliana Meek left her job as a CIA cyber threat analyst in 2012, returning to Naples to become the second generation to run the gallery founded by Foster Harmon in 1964 and then co-run by her father, J. William Meek, starting in 1972. 

Located at 599 Ninth St. N., the gallery specializes in 20th century American museum collection artists, with paintings ranging in price from $1,000 to $250,000, depending on the size and artist. 

“I really did have a passion for my family art gallery,” says Meek, who grew up in the gallery she now owns. 

Lauren Lukasik

The Bagel Factory, Fort Myers

From the time she could see over the countertop until now, approaching age 30, Lauren Lukasik has grown up inside and around the business her parents founded in December 1995.

“Every vacation we’ve ever been on, we’d end up in the back of a bagel shop,” says Lukasik, now co-owner and manager of The Bagel Factory, 8841 College Parkway in Fort Myers. “There’s a lot of places that don’t take the time to mix the cheeses into their doughs. A lot of places will melt cheese on top of it. We take the time to make distinctly mixed doughs. The cheeses are mixed in. Our bagels actually have eggs in them.

“As I’ve gotten older, I can see why people would take the easy way out and cut some corners. But we’ve never done it like that.”

Mark and Tara Lukasik founded the business. As their two daughters grew older, the parents encouraged them to find other jobs.

“This is a hard business,” Mark Lukasik says. “I wouldn’t wish this on them. Both of our daughters are extremely smart. The other one is in veterinary school. We said, ‘Lauren, we want you to go and have a career.’”

Lauren Lukasik did have a career. She earned a degree in environmental engineering from FGCU, then moved to Boston, where she became an environmental engineer, working at demolition and remediation job sites and sampling environmental cleanups.

“I was in the field,” she says. “It was so much fun. But at the end of the day, I was away from my family. I like to be in the Bagel Factory. It’s not work to me; it’s fun.”

After Hurricane Ian damaged The Bagel Factory in 2022, Lukasik returned home to help her parents with the storm recovery. She went back to Boston halfheartedly until she returned to Fort Myers for good.

The Bagel Factory bakes 600 to 800 bagels per day, and up to 2,500 bagels on a peak day — such as Christmas Eve, when multiple generations of customers visit, getting orders in hand for Christmas morning.

“There’s a whole new appreciation for how hard they’ve worked and what they’ve built,” Lukasik says of her parents. “Their knowledge, their guidance, it’s invaluable. This is what we do. This is the only life.”

When she returned for good, she knew most, but not all the nuances of running the business.

“When she came back, she could do all of the tasks out front,” Mark Lukasik says. “She could run the register. She could serve people and do all this other stuff. But the goal was — and she picked up on it real quick — she was going to bake. She can mix the dough; she can run the oven. So, if something happens, you’re not beholden to somebody.

“She’s adamant. ‘Dad, you stay out of the store.’ And she can do it. Lauren’s the real deal, which is pretty cool.”