Restaurant owner adds bug spray invention to menu

Elke and Brian Podlasek have had their plates full for 20 years, running a busy restaurant on Sanibel Island, the Island Cow. The popular joint — it’s a “crazy, Key Westy-kind of place,” says Brian Podlasek — does more that $6 million in revenue a year.

In those 20 years, through hurricanes, red tide and more, one constant issue the owners have grappled with is as Florida as sunshine: bugs. On Sanibel, they run the gamut, including mosquitos, fleas, ticks and no-see-ums. That last one is the obvious term for bugs from the Ceratopogonidae family, also called biting midges. “The bug situation out here is brutal,” Brian Podlasek tells Coffee Talk. “If you stay outside (without protection) for too long, you are dead.”