BRADENTON BEACH, Fla. — How do you cope after a tragedy? 

I mean, think about it: how, after losing everything you’ve worked so hard to achieve, do you rediscover joy?

It’s a hard question, but can sometimes lead to easy answers, especially if you’re Susan Amos.

What You Need To Know

  • The Fudge Factory is fully operational after having to recover from Hurricane Milton for a couple months

  • The business, located in Bradenton Beach, suffered hundreds of thousands of dollars' worth of damage as a result of the hurricane

  • They were able to reopen around Thanksgiving and are hopeful to see customers come in full force for the spring and summer months

“I just like playing with chocolate,” said Amos.

To be fair, Amos’ job isn’t the most conventional. After all, she’s the manager of the Fudge Factory in Bradenton Beach.

There’s something about making chocolate by hand that’s kept her doing this kind of work for the last 14 years.

“Somebody has to be quality control, right?” Amos said jokingly. “I have to make sure it's not poisonous before everybody else eats it.”

It’s a pretty sweet gig because she deals with chocolate and works alongside the rest of her family every day.

“I get to work with my dad,” she said. “My brothers work here, their girlfriends work here. My husband works here.”

But this dream job with fresh chocolate and homemade fudge went sour in October because of Hurricane Milton.

“The whole ocean was basically in here,” Amos said. “There was sand everywhere and just ice cream melted everywhere. It was a disaster.”

The place was fully stocked right before Halloween. They lost everything.

“Never my life I've ever been through such depression,” said Ben Kaminecki, owner of the Fudge Factory, and Amos’ dad. “You know, crying, the loss of everything we lost in here.”

He says Anna Maria Island was closed for quite a while after the storm, so they waited weeks to finally start cleaning up.

By that time, ice cream and other materials had spoiled, and they had over 200,000 dollars’ worth of damage, which isn’t even counting the damage he suffered at his fudge shop in Siesta Key.

“Usually around September, I go to vacation and try to enjoy my life a little,” Kaminecki said. “Instead of going on vacation, I sat here for the 60 days every day, working 15 hours a day to get the store back in the business.”

To say things were tough in October and November would be an understatement.

“I feel like I lost five years of my life (because) of all the stress that I went through to try to bring the stores back,” he said.

But Kaminecki has owned numerous businesses in the past and he was determined to bring this one back because of the joy it creates for so many.

In all, he spent about $300,000 not only renovating this store, but their shop down in Siesta Key as well. When you take a look at the finished product and all the hard work they put in, you can see that the goal was to make this place sweeter than it was before.

“We redid the floors,” Kaminecki said. “We did everything. The walls, the sheetrock, everything. The whole store is brand new.”

They reopened around Thanksgiving, and they’re now approaching their busier time of year and couldn’t be more grateful to see customers again.

“It's something about the chocolate,” Kaminecki said. “Makes the family happy. Bring them together. There’s just something about our business. People come in with a smile, walk out with a smile.”

Which is why, in part, Amos has stayed in the family business because there’s something about chocolate and that joy it brings people that makes coping after a tragedy a little easier.

“It's definitely nice to be back and have it as nice as it is,” she said.

And, really, how sweet is that?

Kaminecki says they closed the factory for about two months to put all the renovations into reopening the store ahead of the holidays.

With so many other hotels and businesses still trying to reopen, his concern now is whether there will be tourists coming back to his community this spring and summer.