Seagrove Village Market Has Said Goodbye Before. Last Time, a New Building Was Waiting.

"We wish we could have kept the old building forever, but it was being held together with duct tape," Ann Hartley told the Northwest Florida Daily News in November 2016, laughing about the 1949 market she and her husband George had torn down the year before. A new Seagrove Village MarketCafe was about to open in the same spot, and she wanted regulars to know it would look familiar.

That building served its last meal on Thursday, Oct. 22, 2026. The business dated to 1949, and the building at the corner of 30A and County Highway 395 dated to 2016. Inside it were the signs, recipes, keepsakes and staff the Hartleys brought over from the original market when they rebuilt. The first time Seagrove lost its market, there was a plan to bring all of that back. This time the closure statement has no plan in it.

The first goodbye drew about a thousand people

In the fall of 2015, the Hartleys invited friends and customers to a free last day of food and music at the original building. According to the Northwest Florida Daily News, about 1,000 people came that Friday. The restaurant closed that Saturday, and demolition was expected later that month.

The front of that building dated to 1949. Seagrove founder C.H. "Cube" McGee built it as a live/work station, and the back section was added in the mid-1970s. Diners sat at picnic tables with red-checkered tablecloths in the original front room, out on the patio, or in the back, where a video played photos of Seagrove from the 1940s.

The paper asked George Hartley for his favorite memory of the place, and he picked a storm. "After Ivan, this whole community came together to help each other," he said. "I'll always remember that and cooking all those Ivan burgers on the grill."

When the old building closed, its replacement was already planned. The Hartleys intended to build a larger café just north of the original, pending final approval from Walton County, and to turn the old site into parking. A SoWal report from October 2015 described the planned building as resembling the old market "to provide continuity."

What moved into the 2016 building

The new café was scheduled to reopen on Nov. 19, 2016. "We kept as much of the old stuff as we could," Ann Hartley told the Daily News. "Same logo, signs, and decorations and are using them in the new market so that everything looks familiar. Even the old glass fuse box."

Based on that reporting and a Daily News review published that December, these things made the move:

• The logo, signs and decorations from the 1949 market
• The old glass fuse box
• Some bench seating from the original restaurant
• The deep-fried menu, unchanged
• The staff, with all the familiar faces returning
• Indoor, outdoor and porch dining

"We always knew we would have to move the market, and we are glad to bring it back," Hartley said. "We have the memories, and now we have a nice new building."

Over the next decade the newer building collected keepsakes of its own. In 2024 the café marked its 75th anniversary, and a release announcing the anniversary listed what it was adding and putting on display:

• The key box. In the 1950s, Seagrove vacation-home owners left their house keys in a box at the market so maintenance workers could pick them up while the owners were away. The release said the original box was still on display.
• Junie McGee's cookbook. The Hartleys found it after buying the market, and the release said 300 reprinted copies would be available for purchase at the market for the anniversary.
• The mural. Local artist Kate Balyaeva painted it with the Cultural Arts Alliance of Walton County. It faces Hwy 395 along the bike path.
• The George-normous Po' Boy. A $99 anniversary sandwich of fried shrimp, oysters, grouper and andouille sausage on a 12-inch roll, sold with an "I conquered the George-normous" T-shirt.

The menu's best-known item had been around much longer. The grouper sandwich made Garden & Gun's 2008 list of "100 Southern Foods You Must Try Before You Die."

Oct. 22 came with a last day and no plan

Hurricane Isaias went through the Panhandle in October. By Saturday, Oct. 10, it had weakened over Alabama, and the first 30A restaurants were reopening that weekend. Most of the corridor was serving again within four days. On the Santa Rosa Beach end of 30A, the reopening dates looked like this:

Nine days after the last of those reopened, the Hartleys posted their decision. Their statement appears on the Seagrove Village Market website and on the Watersound Village Market site:

"This community has been the heart of everything we do. Since Hurricane Isaias, we have had to make some difficult decisions about our restaurants. We have made the difficult decision to close Seagrove Village Market Cafe and Watersound Village Market. Thursday, October 22, is the last day for both. Our family will use the time ahead to plan for what comes next."

Watersound Village Market, which opened in Inlet Beach in 2023, closed the same day. SoWal's post on the closure described the two as two of the Hartley Restaurant Group's three restaurants. The statement does not describe any damage to the Seagrove building. The only damage it mentions is to the exterior of Surfing Deer, which stayed open.

In 2015 the farewell announcement came with a new building, a county approval in progress, and a plan for the old lot. The 2026 statement names no building, no site plan and no reopening date. It doesn't mention the key box, the cookbook, the fuse box or the mural on the 395 side either. The one promise it makes is about the food. "This isn't the end for the po'boys and Deep Fried Love that you have known for more than 75 years."

How the Hartleys started, and what's open now

George Hartley found the market by accident. According to the anniversary release, when the family was building a home one street over in the late 1990s, he would walk to the market for a Coke and didn't realize there was a restaurant in the back for months. He became a regular, always ordering the shrimp po'boy. When he overheard the owner say he was ready to retire, he asked, "How much do you want for it?" The Hartleys took over on July 1, 1999.

Twenty-seven years later, their remaining restaurant is in the same village. Surfing Deer is at 2743 County Highway 30A, on the corner of 30A and 395. It serves dinner Monday through Saturday from 4:30 to 9 p.m. and is closed Sundays, with takeout from 5 to 6:30 p.m. In the closure statement, the Hartleys say the storm damaged the outside of the building, the damage is being repaired, and inside "it's business as usual."

Before you throw out an old card from the market:

1. Gift cards from any Hartley restaurant are honored at Surfing Deer, for dining or merchandise, according to the statement. That includes cards from Seagrove Village Market and Watersound Village Market.
2. News about the po'boys will come through the family's newsletter. The statement says people who sign up for the Hartley Restaurant Group email list will be "the first to know when something new is cookin'."
3. The original announcement and updates are on Seagrove Village Market's Facebook page, where the Hartleys first posted the closure, according to al.com.

Ann Hartley told the Daily News in 2015 that what she would miss most were the stories customers told about the market in the 1960s and later, including the cigar box where people left their keys when they went out of town. "It was the hub of the community," she said. In 2024, the anniversary release said the original key box was still on display at the market. The closure statement doesn't say where it goes next.

We follow Seagrove the way neighbors do, and we'll be watching the corner of 30A and 395 to see what the Hartleys announce next. If you have questions about that stretch of 30A, about owning in Seagrove, or about anything else along the coast, the team at Andre Dominick & Theresa Felton would be glad to hear from you. Let's Talk.