On the Thursday before Christmas, job hunting was the last thing on the minds of Goddard Produce employees.
General Manager Mike Murphy, 43, was fishing in Manatee County, taking only his second day off since joining the company a year and a half ago.
“It’s Christmas and it’s really quiet, so I decided I was gonna go fishing yesterday,” Murphy said. “Then I got a phone call. ‘Hey, where are you? … I really need you back here. We have some things to talk about.’”
Sales Representative Ashley Pealy, 31, was also off for the day, finishing up some Christmas shopping with her 8-year-old son while her 4-year-old and 9-month-old children were at daycare.
“With hindsight 20/20, I obviously would not have gotten everything I got if I knew literally hours later I wouldn’t have a job,” Pealy said.
Whittnei Buxton, 35, had worked her way up to the role of office manager and schools liaison — often putting in 60-hour weeks and sacrificing time with her husband and four kids — so the family could move out of her mother-in-law’s house.
“We were actually just about to get our own place,” Buxton said.
But around 1 p.m., all of the employees of the fruit and vegetable distribution company at 1111 W. Main Street in Lakeland got the news: The business was closing immediately.
The nine office staff, four sales representatives, 13 warehouse workers and 18 drivers will be paid for their current week’s work plus two more weeks. Then they’re on their own.
Many employees told LkldNow they have no idea how they will replace their income on such short notice. The drivers earned $42,000 to $50,000 a year, sales staff were in the $50,000 to $60,000 range and management earned more than that.
“We were paid good money to do a good job,” Buxton said. “Our warehouse was small, but we ran efficiently. We had such good relationships with all of our customers.”
Pealy said she was up until 3 a.m. looking at job listings. She and her partner, Victor Alejo, both worked for Goddard. Alejo, 32, was the transportation manager, so they have now lost all of their household income.
Family business changed hands
Goddard was a multi-generational, family-run business until September 2020. It started as the Standard Fruit Company in the 1920s, during Florida’s citrus and real estate boom, and then became John Goddard Produce in the early 1950s when its namesake bought out his partner.
John Goddard’s twin sons, Bob and Dick Goddard, joined the business full-time in 1971 after returning from the Vietnam War. They took over day-to-day operations in the 1980s when their dad retired. Eventually, two grandsons joined the team.
They bought produce when it was in season, and shipped it first to small grocers, then supermarket chains and restaurants. Eventually, their trucks primarily delivered to institutions like public schools, nursing homes and military bases.
The Goddard family rode the ups and downs of a volatile agriculture industry for 70 years, including citrus greening and hurricanes; freezes, floods, fires and droughts; and, of course, a global pandemic that closed many of its institutional customers.
Finally, they cashed out, selling the enterprise to Francis “Alfie” Oakes III, owner of Oakes Farms, one of the largest independently owned agribusinesses in south Florida.
Business filings with the Florida Division of Corporations list attorney Steven Bracci as the registered agent of Goddard Produce and Dan St. Martin — second-in-command at Oakes Farms — as its president. It was St. Martin who delivered the news to the Lakeland employees on Thursday.
Murphy said he was brought on as Goddard Produce’s general manager shortly after the changeover and had to make some hard decisions.
“There was just simply way too many employees for the scale work that was involved,” Murphy said. “It gets painful when you have to start making staffing changes like that. But I did what was right and I built a really good team. We really had things going really well.”
In social media posts shortly after the changeover, the new leadership vowed to carry on the Goddard family’s tradition of “impeccable customer service and unmatched product quality.”
“Like the Jenkins’ of Publix Supermarket, the Goddard Family remains a cornerstone of the Lakeland community and surrounding areas. In 2021 and beyond, Goddard will continue its tradition of excellence,” one post said.
A high-stakes school lunch contract
Several employees called the layoffs “an utter shock” and “a punch to the gut” — made worse because things seemed to be going well for the business.
“Even if they were still going to do it, why couldn’t they just wait one more week?”
Whittnei Buxton, former employee of goddard produce
“We actually were doing really good in the street sales. And the general manager that had taken over, he ended up making us profitable,” Pealy said. “But our bread and butter, our main income, were the school contracts.”
Murphy said 80 to 85% of the company’s business was supplying fresh fruits and vegetables to central Florida schools as a subcontractor for Oakes Farms.
Oakes, 55, of Naples, grew his business through contracts with the U.S. Departments of Agriculture, Justice and Defense:
- In October 2017, Oakes Farms won a five-year contract of up to $40 million from the Defense Logistics Agency to supply fresh produce to schools and military installations in the southern region of Florida.
- In July 2018, it was awarded a similar five-year contract of up to $46.9 million for the northern part of Florida.
- A third five-year contract followed in September 2018, providing up to $45 million to serve central Florida.
- The trend continued last year when Oakes beat three other bidders to secure a five-year, $238.5 million contract to supply defense and school customers in Alabama.
But the streak may have come to an end. Oakes was counting on a new, bigger contract from the Defense Logistics Agency — worth up to $351 million over five years — to serve central Florida and Puerto Rico. The contract is still marked “pending” on the DLA website, but Goddard employees say the rumors are that Oakes didn’t get it.
“What I was told was that it was still showing as pending, but Steve (Bracci) apparently knows somebody and was given a heads up,” Pealy said.
Murphy emphasized that it’s not official yet “and it’s possible it won’t happen. But yeah, that is the fear. And the way the company is structured financially, it can’t survive without that business.”
Buxton said shutting down the company based on whispers just days before Christmas was cruel.
“Even if they were still going to do it, why couldn’t they just wait one more week?” she asked. “It’s not set in stone. It’s still pending. … Why, three days before Christmas, would you do that to somebody? To 50 people that have children, and families, and bills to pay? They have no idea what they did.”
“People with kids don’t have a choice but to pretend to be okay,” Buxton said. “And that makes it even harder because you have to fake it, and you have to hold all of that inside.”
Did politics play a role?
If Oakes Farms did lose the contract, employees speculate there are two possible reasons. Either it was underbid by another company — like Brian Puzyski’s Farm Fresh Produce in St. Petersburg or Tampa-based U.S. Foods. Or perhaps Alfie Oakes’ extreme political views and outspoken criticisms of the federal government scuttled the deal.
Oakes is active in right-wing politics and was dubbed “The MAGA Grocery King of Southwest Florida” by Mother Jones magazine.
He charted buses to take 100 Donald Trump supporters to the “Save America” rally in Washington, D.C. on Jan. 6, 2021, and flew there on his private plane, although he denies participating in the attack on the Capitol.
Oakes Farms lost a $6 million contract with the Lee County School district after he made controversial posts on social media about COVID-19 and the Black Lives Matter movement. Almost 18,000 people signed a petition on Change.org urging the Lee and Collier County school districts to cut ties with Oakes Farms.
Oakes sued the School District of Lee County for canceling the contract, claiming it was retaliation against him for exercising his First Amendment rights. Bracci represented him, but a U.S. District Court judge sided with the school district.
Oakes later sued the Collier County school board alleging improprieties in its search for a new superintendent.
Pealy said Oakes’ political activities have impacted Goddard Produce in the past.
“That’s burned bridges before. Like even us salespeople, we’ve run into things where people were like, ‘Oh, yeah, we don’t affiliate with him,’” Pealy said. “You know, there’s certain areas that we just don’t go to because they know Alfie and they’re not going to buy from him. So we really think that might be a reason why we lost the contract.”
Neither Oakes nor Bracci responded to voicemail messages Friday.
Goddard Produce was not required to give workers advanced notice under the federal law called the WARN Act — which stands for Worker Adjustment and Retraining Notification Act — because it had fewer than 100 employees.
latest news
Something went wrong. Please refresh the page and/or try again.
I am sorry to hear this, especially just before the holidays. Citrus Connection is currently hiring bus drivers for the city and county routes. Immediate openings, good benefits.
My grandfather had a decent stand of fruit trees on his property. I Picked the fruit and we sold it to Mr. Goddard back in the day. He was a good and fair man. Tell Publix to contract with Goddard. It’s a shame the employees got laid off just before Christmas. I would advise them to apply at Publix.