- April 1, 2025
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Outdoor seating at the Turtle Shack Cafe at European Village. Photo by Brent Woronoff
New Turtle Shack Cafe employees busser Nathan Blumenauer and hostesses Madison Berkowitz and Kayleigh Phillips. Photo by Brent Woronoff
Outdoor seating at the Turtle Shack Cafe at European Village. Photo by Brent Woronoff
The Turtle Shack Cafe has been open for about two weeks at its new home in the European Village, and business has been booming, manager J.T. Cerchiara said.
The popular restaurant has been closed since a fire broke out at its Flagler Beach location in the early morning hours of Nov. 25, 2024, extensively damaging the building.
The Turtle Shack has a lease for a year at the European Village in Palm Coast with an option to extend if it works out, Cerchiara said. So far, it’s been working out, though not without some hiccups.
“The first two weeks have been killer,” Cerchiara said. “We've been busier these first 10 days than we have in 14 years on the beachside. I don't know if it's maybe just taking away the food from people for three months and makes them all come back hungry, but no, it's been a good turnout. It’s a bigger grasp of people here in Palm Coast. You get all the people that don't want to travel to the beach for lunch, so you're in a better location.”
All but two servers from among the restaurant’s 22 employees have returned to work at the European Village, but the restaurant is still not fully staffed. It has brought on more servers, hostesses and kitchen help and is still hiring because of the amount of business it has been doing, Cerchiara said.
“We’re still taking applications,” he said. “We need a lot of kitchen help. In front of the house, we’re still accepting applications. We've got a few new servers that we're training.”
The restaurant canceled a ribbon cutting planned for March 24 to give its staff a couple of days off. It also had to close early in the afternoon on March 28 because of refrigeration issues, according to a post on its Facebook page.
“We've kind of been rolling everything out in stages,” Cerchiara said. “We have our liquor license here, but we haven't rolled our full bar out yet just because we wanted to do a soft opening and see how everything goes.”
The European Village location seats about 20 or 30 more guests than the former location with a lot more outside seating and a few more tables inside, Cerchiara said.
I think (the Turtle Shack) is bringing in a good amount of people to the Village. Hearing from all the other business owners, this is a great addition here. There's nothing like us in here.”
— J.T. CERCHIARA, Turtle Shack Cafe manager
“I think (the Turtle Shack) is bringing in a good amount of people to the Village,” he said. “Hearing from all the other business owners, this is a great addition here. There's nothing like us in here.”
Among other European Village restaurants, he said, “You’ve got Indian, you've got Italian, you've got Chicago style, sushi, but there's no beach-style (restaurant) with fish sandwiches, fish dinners, crab cakes, burgers and things like that.”
Turtle Shack owners Linda and Danny Niday had leased the building at 2123 N. Ocean Shore Blvd. There hasn’t been a final answer about the future of that site, Cerchiara said, but demo has begun at the site, he added.
“Hopefully, they do rebuild, but we don't know the timeline, so we’re going to be here for the time being,” he said.
The cafe will have the same hours as it had in Flagler Beach, open Tuesday through Saturday, 11 a.m. to 9 p.m.; Sundays, 11 a.m. to 8 p.m.; and closed on Mondays. Cerchiara said once they have a full staff they plan to be open seven days a week.
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