Davelis 'D.C.' Goutoufas

Not Hearing,but listening by Wayne Garcia.... If there’s one thing that Davelis “D.C.” Goutoufas ’90 learned while getting a degree in business at The University of Tampa, it’s the importance of listening to your customers. Goutoufas, 40, puffs on a Diamond Crown Maximus while he relates this bit of wisdom. As he does, a customer walks into his Gaspar’s Cigar Shop in South Tampa and hands Goutoufas two seemingly identical cigars, except for a slight variation in the cigar bands. Same cigars, two different boxes, but also identical, allegedly the same stogie, the customer says, but the one with the gold band tastes different — better, much better. What gives, the customer asks.Goutoufas takes the cigars and promises to find out. You have to listen to your customers, even if that means reading their lips. Goutoufas is deaf, the first deaf graduate of The University of Tampa. After more than 15 years in banking in Tampa Bay — a career that grew out of an internship for his management major at UT — Goutoufas opened Gaspar’s last year with the help of a fellow Freemason and the support of some of Tampa’s most famous lawyers and businessmen, whose names adorn the small metal placards on the private cigar lockers that line the northern wall of his shop. They are the result of growing up this city’s most politically influential neighborhood and going to its most socially connected high school, Plant High. Building a Base Goutoufas’ roots run deep in Tampa Bay; he is the great-grandson of a pioneering Greek who helped settle Tampa in 1887. They also run deep at UT; his grandmother was a graduate, and his father and uncle attended classes here. His grandfather owned property across the street from Plant Park, in sight of the glistening minarets. After high school, Goutoufas wanted to go to college, and he wanted to go to UT. He met personally with then-President Bruce Samson. The support from the highest levels of the administration, the smaller class sizes, and the professional experience of the business professors sealed the deal for Goutoufas to become a Spartan. He had an interpreter who attended class with him, “and with the support of the professors and the people helping me, I overcame the obstacles,” Goutoufas said. The support of his brothers in Theta Chi fraternity also helped; sometimes they would get away from campus for a cigar break, back at a time when you could still smoke in just about any business establishment. He was always ambitious. At UT, he went to school in the mornings and then walked downtown to intern in the marketing department of First Florida Bank. “The way the business school [at UT] works is it’s about real-world experience,” Goutoufas said. Running for Office After graduation, Goutoufas ran for a seat on the Tampa City Council. He lost that race and a second four years later, but already made his mark on Tampa’s civic fabric by convincing city government to begin closed-caption transcription of City Council meetings. He put aside his ambition for politics (while keeping his love for it) and settled into his own home in South Tampa, with his wife, Katie, and daughter, Olivia. And he eventually traded that dream — with its smoke-filled back rooms — for a different vision, turning his attention from the deal-making to the smoke. One day last year, he got a telephone call from an old friend, a real estate investor. The friend had put together a deal to purchase a small store on West Shore Boulevard that used to house a UPS package business, with rows of mailboxes and a place where a metal barrier came across the middle of the store and allowed customers to pick up their mail after hours. Would this building do? Goutoufas drove over and took a look. “I was thinking,” he remembers, “if mail boxes are there, why not turn them into cigar lockers?” So he did. Goutoufas replaced the “What can brown do for you?” vibe inside the building with dark woods, overstuffed leather chairs, vintage black-and-white photos of Tampa and HD flat-panel television sets. A cigar bar sits at the center of the shop, across from a small but impressive selection of stogies. Taking a Chance Gaspar’s Cigar Shop opened on the Fourth of July 2007. Goutoufas threw a pig roast for his friends and supporters. Three hundred people turned up. “The shop isn’t just about cigars,” he says. “It is an embodiment of something that is uniquely American: the freedom to do and become whoever and whatever you want.” After hours, he slides a metal fence into place, closing off the bar and the merchandise. The rest of the shop remains open 24/7 for members who pay a fee for humidified locker space. A keypad allows them to come in, grab a cigar and relax at any hour of the night or early morning. A closed-circuit camera keeps trouble away. It’s the adult version of a tree house. “This is like a home away from home,” Goutoufas explains. “I remember the days when politics were about the city, county, state or country first, and then your party. You could think what you wanted, heck, even fight for it. But at the end of the day, they came together, had a meal or even a cigar. “Tampa used to be that way,” he adds. “My Tampa will always be that way, as long as those doors stay open.” Because you have to listen to what your customers want. A version of this story first ran in Creative Loafing newspaper, where journalist Wayne Garcia works as political editor.