Anthony Talamo Rossi (September 13, 1900 – January 24, 1993) was an Italian-born American who founded

Tropicana Products Tropicana Brands (''pronounced as'' traa·puh·ka·nuh) is a former American fruit-based beverage company. It was founded in 1947 by Anthony T. Rossi in Bradenton, Florida. Between 1998 and 2021 it was a subsidiary of PepsiCo, but in August 2021 ...

, a producer of orange juice, in 1947 in Bradenton, Florida. It grew from 50 employees to over 8,000 in 2004, expanding into multiple product lines and becoming one of the world's largest producers and marketers of citrus juice. Rossi was an early pioneer in including Florida's citrus juices in school meal programs. He also became a noted religiously-oriented businessman, making annual pilgrimages back to Sicily where he helped build a church and mission. In the U.S., he married Sana Barlow and endowed the Aurora Foundation, which has funded various Christian programs.

Early years

Rossi was born on September 13, 1900 in Messina,

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. He graduated from high school and emigrated to the United States when he was 21. Rossi originally started as a machinist's assistant and later worked as a taxi driver. From there, he created a limousine company and was a grocer at some point in New York City. He also worked as a farmer in Virginia and Florida, the latter which he moved to in 1940. In Florida, he was a restaurateur too. In 1945, Rossi settled in

Palmetto, Florida Palmetto is a city in Manatee County, Florida, United States. As of the 2020 census, the population was listed as 13,323. It is part of the Bradenton-Sarasota-Venice, Florida Metropolitan Statistical Area. History A post office called Palmetto ha ...

. In this city, he founded Manatee River Packing Company, where he shipped packaged gift fruit. He also began sectioning citrus fruit like grapefruit into jars and selling them mainly to the Waldorf Astoria in New York. In 1949, Rossi moved the business from Palmetto to Bradenton and changed the name to Fruit Industries, Inc. There, Rossi produced frozen concentrate orange juice.

Tropicana

In 1946, Rossi founded a small orange juice company in western Florida and thus began the

company. Tropicana's early distribution of fresh orange juice was by way of hand-delivered juice jars to nearby homes, but demand grew, especially in New York City. A major breakthrough came in 1954, when Rossi invented and patented a pasteurization process to aseptically pack pure chilled juice in glass bottles, allowing it to be shipped and stored without refrigeration. He provided consumers the fresh taste of orange juice made from 100-percent fruit. Soon thereafter, he also devised a method of freezing pure whole citrus juice in blocks for storage and shipping. By 1957, a ship, S.S. ''Tropicana'' was taking up to of juice to New York each week. In 1970, Tropicana orange juice was shipped in bulk via insulated

boxcar A boxcar is the North American ( AAR) term for a railroad car that is enclosed and generally used to carry freight. The boxcar, while not the simplest freight car design, is considered one of the most versatile since it can carry most ...

s in one weekly round-trip from Florida to

Kearny, New Jersey Kearny ( ) is a town in the western part of Hudson County, New Jersey, United States and a suburb of Newark. As of the 2010 United States Census, the town's population was 40,684,unit train A unit train, also called a block train or a trainload service, is a train in which all cars (wagons) carry the same commodity and are shipped from the same origin to the same destination, without being split up or stored en route. They are dist ...

s a week, each carrying around of juice. In 1978, Rossi retired and sold Tropicana to

Beatrice Foods Beatrice Foods Company was a major American food processing company founded in 1894. In 1987, its international food operations were sold to Reginald Lewis, a corporate attorney, creating TLC Beatrice International, after which the majority of ...

. Tropicana has been through a number of corporate changes and since 1998, it has operated as a division of PepsiCo.

Christianity

Rossi grew up with a Catholic background but outside church he was a troublemaker. He had experienced an earthquake in his home town of Messina, Italy and it spurred him to seek information about God, Judgment Day and Heaven. After some time in America and experience with business, Rossi sold his large grocery store in preparation to move to the south to take up farming, around which time he began reading the Bible. He and his first wife (Florence) joined the First

Methodist Methodism, also called the Methodist movement, is a group of historically related denominations of Protestant Christianity whose origins, doctrine and practice derive from the life and teachings of John Wesley. George Whitefield and John's ...

Church in Florida in 1941. He and his wife joined Calvary Baptist in Bradenton Florida in 1965. He traveled back home to Italy annually from 1952, and in 1966 he helped to fund a church and mission there. Rossi established the Aurora Foundation in the 1960s, which has funded Christian educational institutions, missions, and other charities.

Legacy

Rossi was inducted into the Florida Agricultural Hall of Fame in 1987. In addition to his work with product development at Tropicana, his efforts to introduce citrus products into school food programs have also been lauded.

References

External links