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Fruits Of Whaley's Labor

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By MARY SHEDDEN | The Tampa Tribune

Published: November 12, 2005

TAMPA — There's a certain rhythm to Ron Whaley's life.

It's a routine that once belonged to his father, and to his grandfather before that. Before too long, the cycle will pass on to Whaley's offspring.

The 64-year-old Tampa native is a produce man — an expert at selecting, buying, and selling fruits and vegetables for his family's legendary south Tampa market.

Whaley was 14 when he started this work, with its cadence much like the arrival of the seasonal crops he knows intimately by look and by smell. It's not a career taught in a lecture hall. It must be lived.

The days always start long before dawn, as Whaley heads down Hillsborough Avenue in his red Dodge Ram 1500 truck.

"You get used to it," he says of the drive from his Lutz home to the outdoor farmers markets and warehouses of the Tampa Wholesale Produce Market, 2801 E. Hillsborough Ave. "Even on my days off, I get up."

He usually has an idea of what he wants for Whaley's Market, 533 S. Howard Ave.

"If it's shaky, you buy what you need to get by till tomorrow," he says. "If you run across something that's good, then you buy a couple more than you would normally."

This morning, Whaley first stops by a farmers market, Florida Produce, looking for cantaloupes and a fruit hard to find right now: tomatoes. Florida Produce, like other markets surrounding the 71-year-old Tampa Wholesale, allows smaller dealers to offer goods to grocers and restaurant buyers who visit nightly, between midnight and sunrise.

Whaley drives up and speaks with farmer David Christopher about crops as if they're migrating birds. Tomatoes, it seems, are disappearing in Tennessee and heading to Quincy. It will be a new year before the harvests reach as far south as Christopher's Ruskin farm.

Christopher, a fourth-generation farmer, parks his pickup outside Florida Produce every night, waiting for buyers. His tomatoes aren't ready yet, so he offers Whaley a deal on Chiquita's Guatemalan bananas, which he brokers during the downtime to help pay the bills.

Some of Whaley's earliest memories surround the wholesale market, visiting "in the dead of winter" with his father, Roy. The market spanning four city blocks opened in 1934, eight years after Whaley's grandfather, Tom, started selling food from his Florida Avenue produce stand.

When asked what his father taught him, Whaley replies: "Everything I know."

A Cup Of Coffee And A List

As he walks the hall at the wholesale market, he chats with dealers whose families also are in the second or third generation of the business.

Whaley enters the narrow office of Baird Produce, one of the many vendors. Like always, he grabs a list his son created the night before showing what produce was at Whaley's Market at closing time.

He glances at it, pours a cup of coffee and repeats the same routine, every day but Wednesday.

Vendors don't hunt Whaley like car salesmen. They watch him as he pinches fruit, runs his hands through cases of green beans and walks through enormous coolers stocked with thousands of cases of food.

Don Little, 87, may be the market's elder statesman. He watched Whaley's father teach Ron and his brother, Roy Jr., how to pick produce. He has seen the brothers share their knowledge with their children. Little, office manager for vendor Produce Exchange, says it helps knowing his customers so well.

"The person you know, you know what they use. Ronnie I've known for 40 years, so I know what he wants."

At the wholesale market, you can't buy less than a case of anything. That's fine with Whaley, who this morning will spend about $3,000 on more than 100 cases of produce. Two days' worth.

"I leave here when I feel like I'm done," he says. "I don't punch any clocks."

The market seems like a daily family reunion. Whaley knows everyone, and likely knew their fathers or uncles. Roy Whaley Jr. is on the loading docks this morning, helping his son-in-law, whose family owns Produce Exchange.

Ron Whaley runs into Phillip Cacciatore, a pal since boyhood who runs Cacciatore Bros., a market with Tampa roots back to 1896. They talk sports for a moment before resuming their parallel routines of buying fresh food.

Roots Deep In The Soil

The familial tone is much the same back at the Howard Avenue market, where Whaley's daughters, Linda Bublick, 41, and Laurie Pearson, 39, and son, Todd, 40, run the operation. Three teenage grandsons punch the clock there, too.

Many of the 40 employees are an extended family who live and breathe the business that Whaley's uncle, C.L. Whaley, opened on Howard in 1934. Ron Whaley has run the market for 24 years, shepherding its upgrade to a new building on the same site in 1987.

Whaley says of his children: "They know exactly what I know."

He credits them for the store's ongoing success — his daughters spearheaded the introduction of the increasingly popular gourmet takeout — and says he has no fear handing over the business June 1, when, he swears, he will retire.

"I will miss it all, that's for sure," he says. "I plan to step down and hand it over. I'll be around, but it will be their call come June 1."

Whaley used to drive the produce he bought at the Hillsborough Avenue wholesale market back to his store. Now, that's how Todd Whaley starts his day, steering a white commercial truck to Whaley's loading dock.

Ron Whaley is ready when his son arrives about 9 a.m. He sits in a lawn chair, lights a Kent cigarette, grabs the produce receipts and watches as the day's harvest comes off the truck.

In the cargo bay, Todd Whaley unwraps and hauls box after box. Five cases of Indian corn. Three cases of okra. Four cases of green beans. Twelve cases of red seedless grapes.

Juan Arenas has been on the job just a few weeks, but already he's learning Ron Whaley's way. On the dock, Whaley barks directions: Stack items headed for the cooler on the left; stuff going straight to market shelves on the right.

Mindi Buchanan comes onto the dock and starts rolling cases of produce into the store before the unloading is done. She started here a few years ago — her mom's a longtime cashier — and has learned Whaley's how-to-sell secrets.

Riper fruit and vegetables on top.

Red potatoes next to green beans because "they go together in the pot."

Corn next to baked potatoes.

Always be aware of the smell.

Know when it's time to cycle overripe items.

"He's easy to work with, if you listen," Buchanan says. "He wants the colors to show."

Vibrant Colors, Changing Seasons

The colors burst the moment the doors of Whaley's Market open: brilliant red apples, vibrant orange pumpkins, cucumbers a rich emerald green. Everything is stacked high and orderly, as if a diligent and methodical child were building castles of potatoes and green beans.

Harriet Perry became devoted to Whaley's Market 30 years ago, when her mother would bring her to the store. Now she drives from east Tampa to pay $7 for a watermelon she knows would be half the price at a big-box grocer.

"I'm sorry," Perry says, "but it's not Whaley's."

It's the customers such as Perry who Ron Whaley will miss. He'll still be around the store, especially at holidays such as Thanksgiving, when he and his brother hold court in back of the produce department as old friends come for food for their family feasts.

"I've never done anything else," he says.

Todd Whaley smirks when asked about his father's retirement. There's hope it will stick — Ron Whaley's wife, Jean, also retires in June, after 43 years as a teacher.

Todd Whaley also knows the family business is something special. He proudly talks of his 7-year-old son, Warren, who helps out at the market.

"It's rare to see anything passed on four generations," he says as he talks of the fifth generation.

Ron Whaley is melancholy when he considers the passage of time. But he says he's ready to retire and enjoy peaceful vacations, like the one he and Jean took to Pennsylvania's Amish Country. Life there is a lot like the fruits and vegetables that surround Whaley as he stands in his market.

Full of color. Changing with the seasons.

"I'm still learning every day."

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