Segrest Farm workers scooped the fish into plastic bags filled with sedatives to calm them ahead of a journey to a Petco store across the country. Then the fish were loaded into insulated cardboard boxes with words in red reading “LIVE TROPICAL FISH” with arrows pointing up.

“If you’ve flown out of Tampa or Miami or Orlando, you’ve probably flown with our fish,” said Segrest Farms brand manager Shelby Stenstrud.

Segrest Farms is among the largest wholesalers of aquarium fish in the United States with 6,000 tanks inside a Gibsonton distribution center. And it’s one of a hundred facilities in Florida that raise and collect fish for pet shops.

While Tampa Bay is known for its oranges and strawberries, aquarium fish have also been one of the region’s prized exports for decades.

Most tropical fish raised in the U.S. come from Florida. The state makes up more than 40% of the nation’s sales, according to federal data, with Hillsborough County priding itself as the “heart of the tropical aquaculture industry.” The tropical fish farm industry had a $172 million economic impact in Florida in 2021, according to a 2021 University of Florida survey.

“You could drive by and you’d never know that you’re looking at a fish farm,” said Segrest Farms president Sandy Moore.
The birth of “Tampa’s oddest industry”

The region’s aquarium roots date back as early as the 1930s, when keeping fish as pets was a growing phenomenon.
Albert Greenberg, the “father of Florida’s aquaculture industry” and inducted to the state’s Agricultural Hall of Fame in 2007, picked Tampa in 1930 to open a tropical fish farm and pioneered raising them in dirt ponds.

His farm sent fish across the world in tin cans and Thermos bottles, according to a Tampa Tribune article in 1934 that called it “Tampa’s oddest industry.”

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“It’ll last,” Greenberg told the Tampa Tribune about the rise of pet fish. “Because, as you know, people must have pets. In cities, it’s difficult to keep a cat or a dog and birds require daily attention. Tropical fish, more or less, take care of themselves, and they always have a show for you.”

Region’s booming fish farm era

By the 1950s, south Hillsborough became renowned for its fish farms. Ruskin was considered the “tropical fish capital of the world,” according to newspaper archives. Because of the Tampa Bay’s tropical climate, easy access to airports and cheap real estate compared to Miami, it became a key destination for fish farmers looking to expand.

To this day, Florida still has the most fish farms in the U.S. Florida recorded 109 fish farms, according to the U.S Department of Agriculture census of aquaculture conducted in 2018. Most are concentrated in Hillsborough, Polk and Miami-Dade counties. The next largest states, Hawaii and Texas, only had 15 each.

By 1996, the UF established an aquaculture research hub in Ruskin to support the fish farm industry. There, researchers look into mitigating disease spread and how to breed new species for commercial selling, said Matthew DiMaggio, director of the UF Tropical Aquaculture Laboratory.

“They can come to us and ask us that and we can design experiments around that, essentially give them a protocol or like a recipe … These are the things that you should follow to hopefully make the most profit for you,” DiMaggio said.

The lab was the first to raise Blue Tangs for commercialization. Before, to have the saltwater fish that inspired the Dory character in Pixar’s Finding Nemo franchise in an aquarium, they had to be wild-caught. Now the lab’s industry partners are learning to farm them.

“The more new species, new products that we can bring to market is more profit for the farmers and for the state,” DiMaggio said. “It helps the industry to diversify and become more resilient.”

How are they farmed?

At Segrest Farms, open since 1961, workers care for approximately a million fish each week.

How they’re farmed can depend on the species, but mostly, the farmers put the male and female fish into a tank mimicking water conditions prime for mating. Then they wait for the eggs.

The eggs are later moved into a 20,000-gallon pond outdoors that can hold about 10,000 to 50,000 fish. Once they’re hatched and grown into adolescents — a process taking about three to six months — the fish are harvested and sent to stores.

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About 40% is farmed directly in Florida, Moore said, and the rest are shipped in from around the world to Gibsonton to be prepared for store aquariums.

Changing tides in the 21st Century

Like much of the agricultural industry in Florida over the last two decades, ornamental fish farming faces pressure from the region’s hot real estate market and cheaper international imports.

The number of fish farms in the state fell 14% between 2013 and 2018, according to the USDA aquaculture census. And that trend could continue with the next five-year census set to be released in December.

“Fortunately, or unfortunately everywhere in west central Florida has had a population explosion,” said David Boozer, executive director of the Florida Tropical Fish Farms Association based in Winter Haven. “I would say a lot of the farms were offered very good money for their land and sold out to developers.”

And many fish farms are competing against countries in Southeast Asia such as Thailand, Malaysia and Singapore which have cheaper labor costs, driving down the price of fish.

During the pandemic, Boozer said the local industry had some of its best years. People were staying at home and adopting all kinds of pets, fish included. Meanwhile, the international trade dropped dramatically.

Segrest Farms Moore said “there was so much demand during COVID — I mean tremendous demand like I haven’t seen since maybe the 80s.”

Before the pandemic, UF’s DiMaggio said Florida fish farmers had to stay in the game by finding new species to breed (like the Blue Tang) or making the fish healthier. As countries reopened, shipping costs skyrocketed and equalized some of the competition from overseas.

In short: Florida is in a position to compete in both price and quality.

“The entire industry is based on what the fish look like,” DiMaggio said. “The Florida farmers really pride themselves on producing some of the best-looking fish in the world.”

The Jacksonville-based chain has built a strong presence in the state since its founding nearly a century ago. Now, it’s about to enter another era under new ownership.

On Aug. 16, discount grocer Aldi announced plans to acquire Winn-Dixie and Harveys Supermarket from Southeastern Grocers for an undisclosed price. The purchase includes 400 stores, 75% of which are in Florida.

Let’s look back at how Winn-Dixie became a Florida staple.

The grocery chain went by several names before Winn-Dixie.

In 1925, William M. Davis bought the Rockmoor Grocery store in Miami with a $10,000 loan, according to newspaper archives. His four sons were stockholders of the store.

They renamed the store to Table Supply and expanded to 36 locations from South Florida to Tampa by 1934. William Davis died that year.

He left the business to his sons — Tampa resident A.D. Davis and James E. Davis — who made Winn-Dixie a Florida grocery empire.

Their first major move was buying Winn & Lovett, taking its name and establishing a headquarters in Jacksonville.

Winn-Dixie predecessors rose with the advent of supermarkets, a new concept that wasn’t fully cemented until the 1950s, said Tampa historian Rodney Kite-Powell. And Winn-Dixie came out of a period of consolidation in the food retail industry.

“It really was a place where you didn’t have to go to the meat market, didn’t have to go to the seafood guy, didn’t have to go down to a produce market, and you didn’t have to go to a bakery,” Kite-Powell said. “It’s like a mall for food.”

A.D. Davis credited automobiles for making it possible for people to travel to a bigger supermarket than a corner store after World War II. People at that time also stopped asking a clerk behind a counter to get groceries off the shelves and started browsing aisles themselves.

The business model was centered on “mass distribution at a low margin of profit,” Davis said.

At one point, the company ate up so many other stores, like Piggly Wiggly and Kwik Chek, that it struggled to juggle the many brands under its umbrella.

“We had quite a problem for a while,” A.D. Davis told the St. Petersburg Times in 1958. “When we merged with a chain we felt that it had a good name and we tried to keep it. At one time we had about nine or 10 different names, and we actually had stockholders that would come down here and not know what they had stock in.”

In 1955, the brothers bought Dixie-Home Stores and merged the names together to form Winn-Dixie Stores, Inc. The other stores would gradually rebrand.

Before Publix, Winn-Dixie was the leading grocery chain in Florida because of its ideal locations and low costs, said food industry analyst Phil Lempert.

The company had more than 1,000 stores by the end of the century in five states and the Bahamas.

By the 2000s, Winn-Dixie struggled with competition from Publix and Walmart.

Winn-Dixie was especially vulnerable to the one-stop shop for groceries, clothing and home items: Walmart Supercenters. Both targeted middle-class consumers, and at least 80% of Winn-Dixie stores were within 10 miles from a Walmart.

Winn-Dixie couldn’t compete on cheaper prices, according to a Tallahassee Democrat article from 2004 when the company was shedding 156 stores.

Meanwhile, Publix focused on creating a comfortable store experience and offering quality customer service.

“Winn-Dixie was just behind the times, that they didn’t see this evolution,” Lempert said, adding that it kept a “let’s pile it high, sell it cheap” mentality.

In 2005, Winn-Dixie filed for bankruptcy for the first time. Then it was bought by South Carolina company Bi-Lo LLC for $560 million in 2011. It had 480 stores by then.

The parent company bought Tampa-based Sweetbay Supermarket and Harveys Supermarkets in 2013. The company renamed itself to Southeastern Grocers and tried to become public. It never did, despite trying again in 2021.

The company then tried to cater to the state’s underserved Hispanic and Caribbean communities by opening the first Fresco y Más grocery store in South Florida’s Hialeah in 2016.

But by 2018, Southeastern Grocers filed for bankruptcy with more than $1 billion in debt. It came out of it by closing over 100 stores, including four in Hillsborough County and one each in Pinellas and Pasco, and by converting two Tampa Winn-Dixies stores to Fresco y Mas locations.

Aldi announced Wednesday that it is taking over Southeastern Grocer’s Winn-Dixie and Harveys Supermarket stores. The acquisition includes about 400 stores across Florida, Alabama, Georgia, Louisiana and Mississippi. The price of the sale was not disclosed.

Aldi said it will evaluate which stores will be converted into Aldi locations. Others will continue to operate as Winn-Dixie and Harveys Supermarket stores. The acquisition is expected to close in the first half of 2024, the grocer said.

“The time was right to build on our growth momentum and help residents in the Southeast save on their grocery bills,” stated Aldi CEO Jason Hart in a news release. “The transaction supports our long-term growth strategy across the United States, including plans to add 120 new stores nationwide this year to reach a total of more than 2,400 stores by year-end.”

Aldi was the fastest-growing grocery chain last year with a focus on the Southeast U.S. with high inflation pinching consumer wallets, according to commercial real estate firm JLL.

But competition is steep in Florida with Publix’s dominance. Aldi grew by 1.87 million square feet, while Publix added 1.2 million square feet in 2022.

By visits, Publix dominates in Florida with more than 600 million visits and Aldi is the fourth-most popular grocery chain in the state at 43 million, according to JLL.

While Jacksonville-based Southeastern Grocers has stores across the region, 75% are concentrated in Florida.

The company experienced several road bumps in the last decade. It filed for bankruptcy in 2018 and had to close nearly 100 stores to restructure. Then Southeastern Grocers tried to go public in 2021 but backed out later that year.

Now it’s divesting all of its stores. While Aldi gets Winn-Dixie and Harveys Supermarket stores, another deal places the 28 Fresco y Más stores catering to Florida’s Hispanic and Caribbean communities under Fresco Retail Group LLC, an investment group focusing on food and retail.

But now the Florida grocer is abandoning that route and instead will focus on bringing some of those GreenWise perks into traditional stores. Publix chose a store in Tampa to be the prototype going forward.

I visited this new store to see how and where “shopping is a pleasure” is evolving.

I pulled into the Gandy Shopping Center parking lot in Tampa and there it was: the redeveloped Publix that opened in March. The outside of the 61,000-square-foot store had naturalistic tones from the gray bricks to the mahogany-brown wood paneling behind it. It’s a similar color aesthetic to the Whole Foods at Countryside Mall across the bay in Clearwater.

This new prototype store is larger than the average Publix, said spokesperson Hannah Herring. Inside, there’s the usual staple departments like dairy, frozen food, seafood, meat, fresh produce, a deli, pharmacy and full-service bakery. But there’s also extra space for features like a cafe and bar, upstairs and outside seating, and burrito, pizza and pasta stations.

One of the main features Publix carried over from GreenWise Markets is the Pours cafe and bar — which I darted to first. Here, shoppers are encouraged to have a glass of wine while they shop.

I ordered myself a mocktail craft soda called a Citrus Mule (because technically, I’m on the clock reporting this story, boo) and grabbed a basket to do some quick shopping.

To the right of the cafe, there’s an open area for fresh produce, the deli, bakery and a pizza station. In the back corner, there was a popcorn machine surrounded by shelves of bagged cheddar popcorn and sweet kettle corn.

I passed by the pizza station, where guests could grab their own slice and put in a to-go box. Some slices had whipped ricotta on top. Next to it, there was an olive bar with an assortment of options.

The experience felt a lot like Whole Foods — where the act of shopping is slowed down and gives consumers time to browse, taste and explore rather than just running in and out. I could see people eating in the upstairs lounge over the checkout lanes or working on their laptops.

Shifting trends

There’s been a growing trend in grocery stores abroad that’s catching on in the U.S., said University of South Florida marketing professor Dipayan Biswas.

“In the U.S., historically we like getting the job done in the fastest, easiest way,” Biswas said. “Whereas, in many other parts of the world, they try to slow down and take it easy.”

In the last few years, Publix’s GreenWise Markets, like the one in Water Street Tampa, focused on that experience factor. They were about half the size of a typical Publix store and featured more restaurant-type features, like the Pours cafe and grab-and-go food that can be eaten within the store.

When Publix announced it was dropping the GreenWise name off those stores, Herring said that customers liked features of the specialty stores but preferred them in their own Publix locations.

It makes sense, Biswas said. Experiential shopping is becoming essential for brick-and-mortar stores to compete against online retailers. And, in Publix’s case, the dominant Florida grocer is facing steep competition from the fast-growing Aldi and others.

“It’s certain to be tough to compete with them on price,” Biswas said of Aldi. “But Publix can differentiate themselves based on experience.”

It is where shopping is a pleasure, after all. The experience has always been part of the brand.

“But what is pleasure?” Biswas asked. “It changes over time.”

As I walked through the Publix, I could see the evolution of what that brand has become. On one side of the store, there’s the traditional row of aisles with plenty of brand options to choose from — now with many more marked organic products on shelves. Conveniently at eye level, I should add.

Back in the 1990s, Biswas said “shopping is a pleasure” meant getting everything in one place. But today, it’s about having a more enjoyable trip. While Publix focused on one aspect and GreenWise Markets focused on the other, it seems the retailer now sees value in doing both.

Industry analysts told me the move to drop GreenWise will help Publix compete against Whole Foods and other specialty supermarkets under its own banner rather than trying to spend energy on another brand. And this Tampa prototype store is the first showing that.

It was nice to sip a mocktail through the giant store and forget I was doing something as mundane as my weekly grocery trip. It was tedious, though, to open the fridge door with a drink and basket in hand, and grab the butter I needed for a tasty TikTok trend that hooked its claws into me. Good thing there was a lot of organic products to choose from to counterbalance that.

Publix’s Herring said there are no plans yet for where the next prototype stores will open. Future stores under this design “will be used as space and opportunities allow.”

It could be new stores or old locations that are due for remodeling like the Gandy Boulevard store, which was redeveloped at a cost of $8 million, according to plans filed with the city in 2021.

But Biswas suspects these concepts will pop up in affluent and urban neighborhoods first. The target shopper is less suburban families and more professionals moving into a city.

“While they might get rid of GreenWise, they’ll have the premium products at stores like these new concepts,” he said. “So if there are people who are willing to pay more and have the experience, why not have a store for them?”

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The Lakeland-based supermarket chain will transform all eight of its GreenWise Market locations into traditional Publix stores, spokesperson Hannah Herring confirmed in an email.

The reason? Shoppers prefer Publix but like certain features of GreenWise Market.

“Our customers’ shopping habits have reinforced that they enjoy the attributes of a Publix GreenWise Market location, but within their traditional Publix shopping setting,” Herring said.

The GreenWise stores, once transitioned, will look more like the newly-renovated Publix in South Tampa on Gandy Boulevard, which includes a Pours station, a bar where customers can order craft beer on tap and wine.

There’s no date for when the shift will begin. Each store will be assessed individually, Herring said.

Publix has eight GreenWise Market stores, including at Water Street in downtown Tampa, which had a highly-anticipated opening in 2021. Other stores in Florida are in West Boca, Fort Lauderdale, Lakeland, Odessa, Tallahassee and Ponte Vedra.

Tapping into growing health and wellness shopping trend

Publix has been experimenting with the GreenWise brand since it launched the late 2000s, a time when organic and boutique grocery shopping became more popular.

For nearly a decade, Tampa’s Hyde Park had a GreenWise Market that looked like most Publix stores but featured pricier organic products. That store rebranded in 2019 as a regular Publix.

Then Publix began introducing smaller footprints for GreenWise Market, like the 26,000-square-foot store built in the Water Street development.

It’s about half the size of a regular Publix and similar in design to Lucky’s Market stores, a specialty grocer that went bankrupt in 2020.

GreenWise focused less on carrying many brands of staple items like toilet paper and more on fresh and prepared foods. Inside stores, there were stations where shoppers could make their own peanut butter or buy coffee beans by the pound.

“The GreenWise I’ve been in have so much made-to-order food that they began to operate more of a restaurant rather than a grocery store,” said Colliers executive vice president of retail services Tyler Peterson. “That’s a whole different world in itself.”

It was part of a growing trend of shoppers going to smaller grocery stores for convenience and accessibility, according to a report published earlier this year from commercial real estate firm JLL.

GreenWise Market saw a spike in the number of shoppers each year compared to typical Publix stores in Florida, the report said. Consumers tend to stay in the specialty stores for longer periods.

Need for different strategy?

But Publix didn’t commit enough to the brand, said food industry analyst Phil Lempert.

“Everybody always pointed at Whole Foods and said Whole Foods can charge so much more,” Lempert said. “Every retailer wanted to do that. It’s not that easy.”

With only a handful of stores, Lempert explained Publix didn’t invest enough infrastructure to scale the GreenWise name and build its own customer base devoted to organic products.

“The question is do you include more of those products — as they have done — in the Publix store or do you want to segment your customers into GreenWise and Publix customers?” Lempert said. “And I don’t think GreenWise really attracted many new customers.”

Even though Publix is dropping the GreenWise Market name on stores, it will add features from the brand into the larger stores such as the Gandy Boulevard location. Peterson said shoppers already go to Publix for their everyday grocery needs and it doesn’t need to differentiate itself with a more upscale brand.

Lempert said Publix could build “store-within-a-store” concepts under the GreenWise name inside a normal supermarket showcasing healthy goods.

“It’s different when you’re a Kroger or an Albertsons where you have 10 or 15 different banners and you really run them,” Lempert said. “For Publix, Publix is the name.”

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In Thormeier’s backpack, the Lakeland local carried a rubber duck, one of the iconic dolphin’s favorite toys, and a framed collage of photos that her 17-year-old daughter took of Winter. They would bring their offerings inside the Clearwater Marine Aquarium as a final gift.

“You were and always will be an inspiration to millions. Swim in peace sweet angel,” Thormeier wrote.

Crowds of visitors lined up, spilling out the door as the aquarium opened for the first day of its public celebration of Winter’s life. The bottlenose dolphin was rescued in 2005, having famously lost her tail after becoming tangled in a crab trap off of the Cape Canaveral coast. She inspired many people around the world, and had two major motion pictures about her life made in the Dolphin Tale movies.

About a week ago, she died of twisted intestines, an early necropsy report confirmed. The intestinal torsion was in an inoperable location and little could have been done to save her, aquarium veterinarian Shelly Marquardt told the press last Saturday.

The dolphin was 16.

The public memorial will last through Wednesday. The aquarium will host special presentations on Winter’s prosthetic tail and screen original footage of the dolphin’s rescue in its Dolphin Tale theater. To commemorate the years she lived, the aquarium temporarily lowered the price of admission to $16.

Hundreds of messages, pictures and flowers have been left at the aquarium since the dolphin died.

“You have been such an important part of our lives ever since we heard your story,” read one note posted on a corkboard wall. “Thank you for showing us how difficulties can be triumphed by playfulness, spunkiness and determination.”

“You brought a whole world together,” another message said.

Claire Park, 10, came up to the tank with her own origami flowers. The Tampa girl spent four or five hours folding different colors of paper together for the dolphin she had visited many times with her family. After she heard of Winter’s death in school, she sat silently on the ride home and cried in her room.

“She inspired me. She didn’t give up,” Park said. “If a dolphin kept on trying to swim without a tail, I could do anything.”

Winter’s tale of perseverance not only motivated Park, but it led her to action. When she goes to the beach, she said, she makes sure to pick up any trash she finds in the water.

Debby Rudolph flew with her daughter Delaney from Cleveland to pay their respects. The 10-year-old girl loves all dolphins, especially Winter. Delaney, wearing dolphin earrings, approached the outdoor memorial and left a picture she drew of Winter swimming. She wrote above, “We’ll miss you.”

“She’s been crying every night,” Debby Rudolph said.

Another girl, Genevieve Stallings, left a bouquet of flowers. She teared up explaining how much she loved Winter. The 14-year-old used to watch Dolphin Tale almost every day when she and her family lived on a military base in Germany.

Stallings said she looked up to Winter when she was moving across the world, returning to the U.S in 2016. One of the first things she wanted to do was visit the dolphin. She did, multiple times.

Thousands of people sent letters to the aquarium, and hundreds of thousands have liked, commented or shared posts online, aquarium spokeswoman Kelsy Long said. Many aquarium partners and organizations also donated gifts, such as Wheelchairs 4 Kids, which sent a wreath. Public officials offered condolences.

Before the aquarium opened Saturday, staff, volunteers and interns met for a private goodbye. They came together at Ruth Eckerd Hall, where both Dolphin Tale movies first premiered. It was very emotional, Long said.

Those who had worked with Winter gave speeches and shared their stories with each other. For some, the dolphin’s story had encouraged them to change their careers to work with marine life.

At the end, Long said, everyone got a small vial of bubbles and blew them together — something Winter would have loved.