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Owned by the same family since 1916, the company was the last in the state to remain independent. Its territory will be split into 3 parts.
By RICHARD DANIELSON
© St. Petersburg Times, published November 3, 2001
TARPON SPRINGS -- After nine decades of distributing the world's most popular soft drink from northern Clearwater to Spring Hill, the family that ran Florida's last independent Coke distributing company has sold its business to Coca-Cola's corporate conglomerate.
Executives with Tarpon Springs Coca-Cola Bottling Co. Wednesday signed the papers selling the business, company president John Aide said Friday night. Although the company still carried "bottling" as part of its name, no soda has been bottled at the plant since 1985.
The sales price will not be disclosed, Aide said. The company's territory, which stretched as far east as Wesley Chapel in Pasco County, will be split into three parts. Forty three of the company's 80 employees were offered jobs at plants in St. Petersburg, Brooksville or Tampa.
The sale does not include the company's plant and 9 acres just south of Tarpon Springs at 4875 Alt. U.S. 19. Aide said that property would probably be sold. The company has received numerous inquiries over the years from developers interested in building strip malls, gas stations or other commercial projects.
Executives at Coca-Cola's corporate headquarters in Atlanta could not be reached Friday night.
Aide, 72, and other relatives had fended off buyout offers from Coca-Cola corporate executives "for years and years and years," he said. The family had been involved in the company since 1916. But in the past several years, Aide said, it became harder and harder to hire workers who could provide the standard of service the company has always tried to provide.
"I couldn't get good help," he said. "We've been working short-handed for the last 21/2 years."
The family's decision to sell was not influenced by a downturn in the economy, Aide said.
"We've had increases in business all the time," he said. "We didn't make as much profit this year as we had done before, but we were still doing well."
The company advertised and put signs out seeking employees, but the signs sometimes drew attention from the county, which said they couldn't be posted. Moreover, the job required drivers to begin their routes no later than 4:30 or 5 a.m.
There were other factors as well. Supermarkets used to be easier to deal with, Aide said, because individual store managers had more decisionmaking authority. But as supermarket chains have grown, consolidated their operations and become more bureaucratic, "the store manager doesn't have the final say in what goes on in his store," he said.
At the same time, Aide said, supermarkets have become more demanding.
"It used to be a wonderful experience" distributing to supermarkets, he said. Now, "they've laid off half their help and expect all the direct delivery people to stock their shelves."
The Coca-Cola bottling franchise in Tarpon Springs was started in 1913 by Angerios Leousis, a businessman not related to the family that ended up running the company. That family first got involved when T.B. Gibson and two other men bought the business in 1916.
T.B. Gibson, the great-uncle of John Aide's wife, MaryAnn, hit up his brother, Arthur Gibson, for money to help run the business. T.B. Gibson died in the influenza epidemic of 1918. A second partner also had died and the third was away at war. Arthur Gibson, MaryAnn Aide's grandfather, came to run the plant.
He bought out some other partners in 1921 and it has been in the same family since. At one time, the family lived above the old plant, which was at the southwest corner of Pinellas Avenue and Court Street.
The company stopped bottling in 1985, when the man in charge of the bottling operation was sick for about a year, and it became harder to produce a growing product line.
When John Aide joined the family business in 1958, there was one product: a 61/2-ounce bottle of Coke. Coca-Cola now sells 120 products.
Since 1985, the company had bought all its Coca-Cola products from plants in Tampa, Orlando and Chattanooga, Tenn., then shipped them to stores in a territory with a growing population. The company's sales reached 2-million cases in 1995 and were up to nearly 3-million cases a year at the time of the sale, Aide said.
But there has been the opposite trend in distribution. In 1958, there were 58 independent Coke bottlers in Florida. Tarpon Springs Coca-Cola was the last.
After years of overtures, negotiations began in earnest after Aide and two Coca-Cola executives had dinner at Louis Pappas Riverside Restaurant in May. One told Aide, "Johnny, I want to get serious about this. We want to buy your operation."
Aide said he turned down one offer as "way short" on money and "figured that would take care of it." But they returned with a better offer, and Aide signed a letter of intent in July.
"I think it was the move that we needed to make or we wouldn't have made it," he said. "We were not forced into doing this in any way. It was our decision."
Now that he is out of the business, Aide anticipates spending more of his time with his volunteer position with the Boy Scouts. A former Life scout, he is president of the scouts' Southern Region Area 4, which covers most troops in Florida, southern Georgia and part of Alabama.
Still, it was hard to say goodbye to longtime employees. One, now 80, had joined the company a month before Aide himself did in 1958.
As a family business, "it's something that's near and dear to everybody," Aide said. "It was hard to tell everybody goodbye, there was no two ways about it."
- Staff writer Richard Danielson can be reached at (727) 445-4194 or danielson@sptimes.com.