Business & Tech

Harr's Surf & Turf Manager Blames Groupon for Woes

Palm Harbor's landmark Surf & Turf Market is not closing, says its General Manager Stephan Innocenzi. He explained that the popular market is having financial difficulties after redeeming close to 40,000 Groupon vouchers over the last two years.

If you've been to Harr's Surf & Turf Market lately, you may have noticed the shelves and refrigerated display cases that used to be filled with choice meats, fresh seafood, marinated skewers and fresh produce are a bit bare. This may have led you to think the popular Palm Harbor market, which has been open since 1987, is closing. 

But, Surf & Turf General Manager Stephan Innocenzi says that's not the case at all.

"We're not going anywhere."

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Innocenzi says in the coming weeks Harr's Surf & Turf will get an infusion of cash which will allow them to restock the shelves and display cases with food. 

He says a contract with Groupon did more harm to the market's business than good. Innocenzi explained that the market's first Groupon coupon deal brought people in the door.

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"The first one we did, it seemed pretty good. Volume was up."

This encouraged Surf & Turf managers, so they signed a contract with Groupon.

"We made a deal with Groupon almost two years ago. We didn't know anything about Groupon," Innocenzi said.

The contract called for three Groupon deals per year, for a two-year period. During each deal, customers could buy a $40 Harr's Surf & Turf gift certificate online for $20. 

For each gift certificate that was sold, Groupon gave Surf & Turf $10 and kept the other $10. So, Surf & Turf wound up receiving $10 from Groupon and customers left the store with $40 worth of food. 

Innocenzi said that for the market to break even on the Groupon deals, customers had to spend $12 more than the value of each gift certificate.

"90 percent of people didn't do that," he said. 

Instead of attracting new, repeat customers who spent freely, the Groupon deals brought in a lot of penny-pinching customers, who didn't want to spend any more than the value of the $40 gift certificate.

"A lady once wanted us to cut a shrimp in half," said Innocenzi.

He also believes that many Groupon customers were manipulating the system and creating fake email addresses to get multiple gift certificates, which added to the market's money woes. 

"Groupon doesn't really police these very well," he said.

Innocenzi says the Surf & Turf Market redeemed close to 40,000 Groupon vouchers over the last two years. 

"We did our busiest year ever on paper," he said with a sigh, adding that even with the high sales figures, the market still had to dip into savings.  

"I'm not going out of business, but we're struggling."

Innocenzi has a few recommendations for businesses considering Groupon. He thinks the deals have the potential to help those businesses that sell a service or businesses that sell items marked up at 20 times the cost.

Looking back on the Groupon experience, Innocenzi wishes he would have done one thing differently.

"I wish they never would have called me that day."

Patch has contacted Groupon about Innocenzi's claims that Groupon does not monitor for possible violations of its deals. 

"We put caps on all of our deals so there would have been a cap," said Media Relations Spokesperson Nick Halliwall.

Halliwell also says he is looking at the contract with Harr's Surf & Turf to find out what the Groupon deal limitations were. We will pass along that information as soon as we receive it.

Harr's Surf n' Turf Market is located at 3235 Tampa Road, Palm Harbor (727) 785-8873

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