The Dock at Crayton Cove reopened last month after Hurricane Ian caused extensive damage to the restaurant on Naples Bay. 

With almost 5 feet of flooding inside of the restaurant, it took more than two months for owner Dan Groom and his team to renovate the entire restaurant from the inside of the kitchen to the outside landscaping. Despite these challenges, Groom took advantage and upgraded the damaged spaces.  

“We used it as an opportunity since we had to do so much work to get the restaurant back open to upgrade the space — renovate the bathrooms, renovate the inside of the restaurant and we completely renovated the kitchen,” Groom said. “So we did a lot of work with stuff you can’t see, and then also stuff you can see that brings the restaurant back to life.”

As a part of Naples’ history for almost 50 years, it was emotional for the staff to see parts of the restaurant that were unsalvageable. However, Groom continues to see the silver lining in the renovations by looking to the future.  

“We tried to look at this as an opportunity and say, ‘We have to build this anyways, so let’s get the restaurant ready for the next 45 years,’” Groom said. “We understand the historical significance of The Dock and are really trying to create that balance between making it new and exciting, and preserving the tremendous history that’s there not only for Naples residents but for people who have been visiting for a very long time.”  

Groom is thankful for how supportive his staff was in the aftermath of the storm with its collective all-hands-on-deck mentality to complete cleanup as quickly as possible.  

“I think job descriptions kind of go out the window and you’re trying to do whatever you can to get the restaurant back up and running, and we just have an amazing team,” Groom said. “And even our nonmanagement team, the day after the storm, we had a bunch of people show up and help with the cleanup process. It was a very terrible thing that happened obviously, but I feel very fortunate that we have such a great group of people and we were able to get the restaurant back up and running in a very condensed timeline.” 

Along with the positivity of the staff, a community of those who treasure the restaurant helped The Dock at Crayton Cove crew to push through a devasting time for all of Southwest Florida.  

“There were people poking their head in the restaurant every day that we were closed saying, ‘When are you guys planning to reopen?’” Groom said. “It was definitely very exciting to have the support from the community. Then, just watching the city sort of rally around each other, from the city of Naples all the way down to just residents who live here, people were so amazing. So definitely when times get tough, I think this is a great community and we’re so lucky to be a part of it.”