When Euphemia Haye closed without warning in the spring of 2025, longtime regulars did what people on a barrier island do when a landmark goes dark. They asked around. Three weeks later the restaurant reopened, and the answer turned out to be simpler than anyone guessed: it had been bought, not abandoned, by a couple who grew up eating there.
Rachel and Jason Ghormley took over the 50-year-old restaurant at 5540 Gulf of Mexico Drive earlier that year. Rachel's family had marked holidays there for decades. "I have some of my most cherished final memories with my parents here," she said after the sale, and the new owners promised only slight tweaks to the wine list and specials, nothing structural. That decision, made by a couple who could have gutted a tired dining room and rebuilt it as something else entirely, turns out to be the pattern for the whole north end this year. Three legacy businesses changed hands. All three buyers chose to keep the thing they bought recognizable.
Three Sales, One Instinct
Euphemia Haye started as a 28-seat restaurant when Leslie "Les" Buntin opened it in 1975 and named it after his grandmother. It has expanded six times since, added the Haye Loft lounge in 1990, and now seats 150. The Ghormleys inherited all of that history along with the building, and they chose to run it forward rather than reinvent it.
A few blocks down, the Sandpiper Inn tells a similar story with worse damage. Hurricane Helene tore through the 1960s-era motel at 5451 Gulf of Mexico Drive hard enough that owners Harold and Christine Cullison seriously considered selling. The structure held, but the interiors did not. Sheetrock blew out of nearly every room, and almost all the furniture was destroyed. Instead of listing it, the Cullisons rebuilt it room by room and reopened on Aug. 16, 2025, keeping the same small, gulf-front, dog-friendly motel their guests had booked for years.
Then there's Cannon's Marina, in business more than 70 years at 6040 Gulf of Mexico Drive on the north end. When owner Capo Miller decided to sell, Port Charlotte-based Ingman Marine bought it as its fifth dealership, beating out larger companies and venture capital offers. The deal kept the Cannon's name and all the staff except the departing owners. By Miller's account, the choice came down to a personal relationship with Ingman's CEO built over years of lunches and, notably, a text offering help the moment the hurricanes hit.
Here's what that pattern looks like side by side:
| Business | Address | Years operating | What the new owner kept |
|---|---|---|---|
| Euphemia Haye | 5540 Gulf of Mexico Drive | 50 | Wine list, specials, the name, the dining room |
| Sandpiper Inn | 5451 Gulf of Mexico Drive | 60-plus | Layout, small-motel format, dog policy |
| Cannon's Marina | 6040 Gulf of Mexico Drive | 70-plus | Name, staff, dealership relationships |
Three separate sales, three separate industries, and in every case the new owner had every reason to start fresh. Storm damage alone would have justified a redesign at the Sandpiper. A dealership acquisition almost always comes with a rebrand. None of that happened here.
The New Businesses Are Making the Same Bet
If continuity were only about legacy buyers protecting sentimental purchases, that would be one story. But the businesses opening from scratch on the north end are behaving the same way, building toward the kind of local standing the older places already have rather than trying to disrupt them.
Sips, the coffee shop that opened at Whitney Beach Plaza in 2023, expanded to a second location this March at 3172 Gulf of Mexico Drive. The space had sat empty since Turtle Coffee Bar closed from Helene damage, and a Starbucks had actually been planned for the storefront next door at 3174. That operator backed out and wished Sips well instead. Co-owners Chris and Justina Carter run the new shop with family close by: Justina's parents operate Performance Pilates in the same plaza as the original Sips, and her brother works both locations. A second coffee shop from the same family beat out a national chain for the same stretch of road, which says something about which kind of business the north end tends to keep feeding.
Guppy's Good Times, the Conshohocken, Pennsylvania import at 5610 Gulf of Mexico Drive, had an even rougher start. Owner Robin Gupta planned to open the first week of October 2024, and Hurricanes Helene and Milton hit while he was still finishing construction. He opened anyway, later that same month, and marked one year in business on Oct. 17, 2025, with a live band and cheesesteak specials. A year in, he says the friendships built at the bar matter more to him than the sales numbers.
A few doors down, Lo' Key Island Grille, run by Courtney Rossler and Kevin Pass at 5620 Gulf of Mexico Drive, celebrated its own first anniversary in February 2026 and used the occasion to host its first official booth at the Longboat Key Garden Club's Taste of the Keys fundraiser, an event now in its 15th year that also drew Harry's Continental Kitchens, a business the Longboat Key Chamber of Commerce recognized last year with its Legacy Family Business Award after 47 years on the island.
And Whitney's, the restaurant on the island's northern tip, filed a zoning application this July to demolish the former office building next door and add outdoor seating that would bring capacity to 200 diners, along with 1,370 square feet of new kitchen and storage space. That expansion hasn't broken ground. It's still working through the town's Planning and Zoning Department as of this writing, which means anyone counting on it for this season should treat it as a plan, not a done deal.
What This Looks Like If You Live Here
For a resident checking in on the north end after a summer away, here's where things actually stand:
- Coffee: Sips now has two locations, the original at Whitney Beach Plaza and a second at 3172 Gulf of Mexico Drive, centrally located across from a public beach access.
- Dinner: Euphemia Haye is open under new owners with the same menu philosophy. Guppy's Good Times is closing in on its second anniversary this October. Lo' Key Island Grille is starting year two.
- Lodging: The Sandpiper Inn is back to full operation after last year's rebuild.
- Boats: Cannon's Marina still goes by Cannon's, now backed by Ingman Marine's dealership network.
- Coming, not yet here: Whitney's larger outdoor deck, still in the permitting stage as of August 2026.
None of this happened in a vacuum. Longboat Key businesses had a genuinely hard 2025, with Lazy Lobster owner Michael Garey reporting a 12.5% drop in business as the island worked through post-hurricane rebuilding. Longboat Key Club and Resort Managing Director Rick Konsavage described the 2026 season as a return to normal rather than a banner year. Against that backdrop, the choice several owners made, to rebuild the familiar thing rather than gamble on something new, reads less like nostalgia and more like a read on their own customer base. On an island this small, the businesses that survived the storms are the ones people already trusted, and the safest bet after a hard year is to keep being exactly what you were.
That's the story worth knowing if you live on the north end right now: not a list of new storefronts, but a run of owners who had every excuse to change things and decided the thing worth protecting was the thing that already worked.
If you're watching how Longboat Key's neighborhoods hold their character through change, or thinking about property here yourself, Kona Realty knows this stretch of Gulf of Mexico Drive block by block. Contact us when you're ready to talk about what's next.
