Blossoming brand

The Preston family founded Manatee Lemon Co. in 1892, a few years before the freezes of the early 20th century would wipe out all their lemon trees.

The Preston family changed the name to Manatee Fruit Co. in 1911 and began producing oranges and grapefruit.

Over the years, they’ve grown and shipped vegetables, produced potted plants and became renowned for gladiolus flowers until 2008 when an outbreak of gladiolus rust fungus caused a quarantine and ultimately destroyed much of their bulb stock.

The company shifted its focus to distributing cut flowers shipped in from elsewhere.

Whiting Preston, the company's CEO and president, is the fourth generation to lead the company. His great-grandfather farmed citrus and vegetables, his father focused on the cut-flower business and, together, the two of them started focusing on distribution beginning in the ‘90s.

Now, after more than 125 years in business, the Preston family is again transforming their business — one of the largest floral wholesale distributors in the state and a leader in sustainable farming — and renaming it Manatee Farms.

'A rich history and culture'

“It’s an old-fashioned business. We’ve been here for a long time, and people have gotten to know us,” Preston said. “If you liken it to fishing, in a way it’s sort of like Cortez fishing village. People understand the charm and allure of something that has a rich history and culture.”

Five days a week, you can find workers at the company's import office as early as 3 or 4 a.m., working to fill orders as shipments pour in from Miami, the largest port of entry for cut flowers in the United States. As many as six trucks in a single day come and go from the 400-acre distribution center at 1320 33rd St. W., in Palmetto.

The company has 40 to 50 suppliers of flowers from all over the globe, including Thailand, Africa and Ecuador.

Flowers from the more distant destinations are shipped in via air. Once cleared by U.S. agriculture and customs inspectors, the flowers go into a vacuum-cooling system that sucks the hot air out of the boxes they are in and replaces it with air chilled to 34 degrees. The company then uses refrigerated trucks to transport them so they remain cool to extend their shelf life at the retailers better than overnight shipping by air.

The goal of the early mornings and the extra shipping precautions is a simple one: get orders turned around fast, ensuring that fresh flowers reach customers.

The company began growing cut flowers in 1936 and potted plants by the mid-'70s. While they have fewer employees than in years past, the variety of flowers it sells has expanded tremendously over the years, with hundreds now available at any given time.

If the flower you're looking for isn't at the main office ready to be shipped out to a retailer near you, it's probably at their 30-acre greenhouse facility, which sits on 300 acres of land near Palma Sola Bay. It's at 11703 40th Ave W, Bradenton, just off Cortez Road before the bridge to Anna Maria Island.

The greenhouses are a wonderland of blossoms. Turn one way and you might find yourself hedged in by rows of tulips. Stumble backward and you could suddenly be staring into a purple sea of peonies and bougainvillea.

The company ships to a variety of retail chains and independent garden centers. You can find Manatee Farms products at more than 150 retail florists throughout Florida, 50-plus independent garden centers from Naples to Central Florida, and at supermarkets, such as Albertson’s and Safeway, as well as wholesalers and brokers nationwide.

Flowers and feelings

Though the business depends on executing the logistics of delivering fresh products, Preston is equally comfortable talking about the value of what Manatee Fruit Co. brings to its customers.

“Flowers are a business of feelings," he said. "There’s a saying that flowers are the language of love, and they really are. When you think about the unspoken word, the word you can never really say, you can say that with flowers.

“Flowers fulfill that moment when no one really knows what to say, and we’ll always need that.”

That's the message of the company's latest transformation.

Hurricane Irma slowed the rollout of the company's re-branding effort last year, damaging several buildings, including greenhouses and a packing house that was built in 1926. But by April the new Manatee Farms brand was fully formed and public with a new look, feel and focus as well as  name.

Cortez Floral and Manatee Floral, two companies under the umbrella company Manatee Fruit Co., were consolidated.

Beyond fresh, sustainably grown

Manatee Farms now is offering “choices that matter” to consumers that care about how the products they buy are produced. The goal is to attract, engage and inform consumers and to be as transparent as possible about where and how their flowers are produced.

Robert McLaughlin, chief sustainability and marketing officer for Manatee Farms, has largely spearheaded the re-branding.

“This is the decade of responsible choices, and that resonates with consumers,” McLaughlin said. “We focus on eco-friendly flowers and plants, ensuring that they are certified so that we can ensure that every flower is held to certain standards.”

According to Manatee Farms, its eco-friendly flowers also are good for the people who work on the farms that grow them and means that “every purchase helps improve the lives of farmworkers by providing fair wages, health care benefits, education programs and employment of women.”

The company requires that farms they work with have sustainability certifications, such as USDA Organic, Rainforest Alliance or Fresh from Florida. According to the company, certified farms employ 60 percent women and are far more likely to offer higher wages and produce higher standards of living for their workers.

Many of these farms also use integrated pest management as opposed to heavy pesticides, meaning that more common-sense, long-term practices are used to achieve the same results. Examples are vacuuming pests out of plants and using organisms like spiders to eat harmful pests, such as thrips, which puncture and damage plants.

Getting the word out

In an effort to create a more direct link between customers and its product, the company is placing interactive digital kiosks in some stores that can help educate consumers about where their flowers come from.

“We want to create a source for the consumers so that we’re reaching out in different ways and allowing access to all this information right in the retailer,” McLaughlin said.

The ultimate goal is to attract customers, engage them, inform them and send them to the retailers that carry the Manatee Farms brand.

For McLaughlin, part of the re-branding is taking into account a balanced three-pillar approach when talking about environmental sustainability: environmental, economic and social.

“There tends to be a lot of misinformation. You can have something be organic, but that has nothing to do with whether or not you have chemical runoff,” McLaughlin said. “It’s about more than just having certifications or seals on a product.”

Preston has seen a lot of change at the family company over the years, and someday there will be others in the family making the decisions right there beside him, he said, and maybe after him, too.

But if Preston has his way, one thing will remain constant: the business will continue to serve the community and people will continue to feel good about the brand.

“Branding is all about how you feel when you mention the name. I hope they feel good about it — I hope it enriches people’s lives,” he said.

“It’s an old-fashioned company that really speaks to the beauty in everything.

"This is a nostalgic kind of industry, but we’ve been trying to breathe new technology into it.”

125 years of change

• 1892 – Manatee Lemon Co. is founded.

• 1907 – 1908 – Freezes devastate lemon trees throughout the area and cause a lemon shortage.

• 1911 – The company is re-named the Manatee Fruit Co., and the trees are grafted to grow oranges and grapefruit. The company also starts growing and shipping vegetables.

• 1936 – The company begins growing cut flowers, with the gladiolus quickly becoming its signature crop.

• 1945 – Vegetable growing and packing is discontinued.

• 1974 – The company begins growing and selling potted plants.

• 1990s – The company shifts to direct importing and distributing cut flowers while continuing to grow its own locally.

• 2008 – The company discontinues production of gladiolus after an outbreak of gladiolus rust forces it to destroy a majority of its bulb stock. Other types of flowers fill the gap.

• 2017 – The company begins developing a new brand and vision, but Hurricane Irma slows the process.

• April 1, 2018 – The company changes its name to Manatee Farms.

126 years of change

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