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Squeezing Into Citrus Market

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By STEPHEN HAMMILL, The Tampa Tribune

Published: December 19, 2007

Updated: 12/17/2007 07:55 pm

KEYSTONE - In a time when family-owned businesses are dying off, a handful of citrus growers have found a way to thrive doing things the old fashioned way.

The secret: combine old and new technologies without compromising tradition.

Cee Bee's Citrus, a 302-acre collection of groves, specializes in fresh and rare varieties of grapefruits, oranges and tangerines.

Seven full-time employees and a handful of part-time workers pick fruit from the 14,000 trees from November to June.

Most of the oranges are sold to juicers, but the grove has begun targeting individual customers. Brent Harmon, the grove's business manager, explained the business model: "We started packaging our products as a delicacy to out-of-town clients," he said. "The Web site has helped with that."

The grove's owner, William Burchenal, entered the citrus business in 1992. Back then it was a typical harvesting operation. Six years ago, he came up with a new marketing idea: Sell gift boxes and specialty baskets of fruit and honey to far-away clients.

Burchenal had the land; he needed a trustworthy caretaker.

"Mike is the man out here. He runs this whole thing," said Harmon, referring to Mike Dennison, grove manager at Cee Bee's Citrus.

During the early days it was just Dennison and Burchenal, picking fruit in the mornings, cleaning and sorting in the afternoon. By day's end they would drive the bushels out to vendors.

Now, most orders are shipped out of state to colder climates via the grove's Web site.

"We've got people in New York eating fresh fruit in four days," Dennison said. Grocery store fruit, he said, is often one or two weeks old before it is put on sale.

"We fill a niche," Burchenal added "We pick and pack everything the same or next day. Nothing sits around here for very long."

The fruit - flame grapefruits, monarch tangerines, navel oranges - usually ships within 24 hours of picking.

They do almost no advertising. The business relies on word of mouth.

The year-old storefront stays open from 8 a.m. to 5 p.m. Walk-in traffic is minimal. Dennison wants to change that. "There are a lot of people in the area who don't know we're here," he said.

During the picking season Burchenal can be found working the assembly line alongside his staff. On a recent afternoon the crew packed oranges for delivery to Eckerd College in St. Petersburg, where a special machine serves fresh-squeezed juice to the student body.

They also supply all citrus products for public schools in Pasco and Hillsborough counties.

"This is about the last surviving commercial grove in the county, and it's family owned," Burchenal said.

As a result, Cee Bee's is expanding at a time when many citrus packing houses in the area are selling off land.

The obstacles for the citrus grower are daunting: cold weather, the economy, and fruit-based diseases such as citrus canker.

The most recent canker outbreak was discovered in Florida in 1995. Because of a quarantine, five states do not allow the importation of Florida citrus. "Basically any other state that grows citrus, they won't allow ours - they don't want to risk it," Harmon said.

Dennison is always on the lookout for it. "Once you get citrus canker, it halts you from using any of the crop," Dennison said. The weather is another predator, even less predictable.

"I tell people we're in the Mother Nature business," Dennison said. "If you don't get enough rain, if you get a hurricane, business suffers. If it stays below 32 degrees for three or four days you can lose everything."

It takes four to five years, and a lot of care, for a tree to produce good fruit. Some of the grove's trees are 60 years old, some as young as three weeks.

Each day Dennison and his crew bring fruit to the assembly area where it is washed and waxed. That is where the workers grade the fruit and sort everything by size.

"The bigger packing houses - everything they have is high speed," Dennison said. "We're smaller and older here. We look at every piece of fruit."

They don't gas or dye the fruit. "If you go to a grocery store and you see an orange that's really orange, most of the time it's been gassed and dyed," Dennison said.

Misconceptions about what fruit should look like mean they have to educate the customer. "We get calls from people saying, 'you sent me some green fruit,'" Dennison said. "We put a card in there explaining it. Try it. Taste it. You'll know that it's good."

Dennison is on call 24 hours a day, seven days a week; he lives on the property. He was born and raised among orange groves. "It's the only thing I know," he said.

He used to hunt and ride a Harley Davidson. "I gave up a lot of stuff when I came to work here," he said. The deer and turkeys that live so close offered a new perspective.

"I kind of feel sorry for them now. They don't have anywhere to go," he said. "There's just so much built up around here now. This is a safe place for them."

Cee Bee's Citrus can be contacted toll-free at (866) 248-7870 or by visiting www.cee beescitrus.com.

Reporter Stephen Hammill can be reached at (813) 865-1523 or shammill@tampatrib.com.

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