If you said JoAnn Elardo is driven to create a stellar product and a standout business, you’d be right. Partially.
If you said she’s driven to do those things—plus invigorate her community—you would have pinned her down precisely.
Elardo is founder of Wicked Dolphin Artisan Rum in Cape Coral. The distillery’s bright blue exterior is quirky, like her life story: A stint at Merrill Lynch, a leap into television production and sales, then a bold move to Poland where Elardo established a footwear distributing company and an athletic clothing and footwear shop that erupted into a 30-store chain throughout Eastern and Central Europe.
Back stateside in 2008, she and her husband, Robert, settled in Cape Coral and leapt into civic life. “I noticed the need for an animal shelter in Cape Coral. We had almost 200,000 people at the time, and no animal shelter,” she says. (She has three adopted pooches.) The no-kill Cape Coral Animal Shelter opened last March. “We have a really good community here in the Cape,” Elardo says. “I think we’re quiet–but we’re mighty.”
She opened Wicked Dolphin in 2012 and looked to leverage it for good. That takes many shapes—bolstering regional tourism; insisting on Florida-grown sugar and fruits; persuading state lawmakers to change Prohibition-era rules (more than 25 new distilleries have opened since); supporting area nonprofits; and diversifying the Cape’s economic base. When the pandemic struck, she and Dan Termini, her nephew and distiller, shifted from making drinkable alcohol to the hand-sanitizing variety. They gave it away—first to Lee Health, and then to the community.
Sustainability matters, too. Elardo has installed technology to minimize water use and planted dozens of trees at the distillery’s site. “It’s really important to give back to community. I think we all do in a lot of ways. But I think for some people it definitely is their purpose and they’re driven to it,” she says.
Last summer, Elardo sold her other business, Big Blue Brewing, to concentrate on Wicked Dolphin. You can bet there will be much more coming from that bright blue building—and it won’t just be rum. —J.R.