Plea to Crist gets peanut butter firm out of sticky situation

The Temple Terrace peanut butter businessman was desperate.

A nationwide salmonella scare - which came from peanut butter produced in Georgia - prompted the Food & Drug Administration to spend weeks inspecting his company's plant in Jacksonville. His plant was deemed safe, but the time spent shut down for inspections had put the business on the edge of a financial cliff.

He estimated his company had only about a month before going out of business.

So Ernest Turbeville made one last-ditch effort to save his Sunshine Peanut Co. and its 14 employees.

He emailed the governor.

In his email, the 80-year-old Turbeville wrote that Sunshine Peanut _ the only peanut-butter maker in Florida, he pointed out _ would be happy to sell peanut butter to the state prison system for a reasonable price.

He said the out-of-state vendor the system was using for peanut butter wasn't giving Florida the best deal.

"We feel as taxpayers in the State of Florida, this is unfair," Turbeville wrote in March. "It will result in the State of Florida losing a good small business that employs a total of 14 people. Please, we need your help. It is only right that a company with the best price, located in the state, paying taxes here and employing people of this state should be able to service the state."

When Turbeville sent the note, he didn't know the vendor already had relinquished its food contract with Florida and that the state Department of Corrections had assumed responsibility for feeding roughly 93,000 prison inmates.

Crist forwarded the e-mail to the department's food service section. state scheduled inspections of the plant, along with the all-important peanut butter taste tests. Roughly three weeks after Turbeville sent the email, he reached an agreement to sell peanut butter to the Florida Department of Corrections.

Of Gov. Charlie Crist, Turbeville says, "God bless him.

"I love him to death for what he did for us and our employees," said Turbeville, a registered Republican who said he has never contributed to Crist but is a supporter.

Though most of Sunshine Peanut's staffers are based in Jacksonville, the company's corporate office is in Temple Terrace. Since the company's deal with the state was finalized, the wholesale business co-owned by Turbeville and his son has thrived and is now up to 18 employees, Turbeville said.

Florida is expected to save more than $195,000 in its peanut butter purchases over a one-year period compared with how much it had been spending, according to the corrections department.

In November, the Department of Corrections' food service provider, U.S. Foodservice, contracted with Sunshine Peanut to buy two flavors of jelly, grape and apple. The state is expected to save about $28,000 for the grape jelly and about $51,000 for the apple.

In December alone, the state paid the company $103,000 for peanut butter and $62,000 for jelly. The estimated annual savings for peanut butter and jelly? Almost $275,000.

"And the quality they were buying before was nowhere near the quality we could give to them," said Turbeville.