Sammy's Seafood keeps Tampa Bay restaurants stocked with fresh catch

St. Petersburg couple has been reeling it in for decades. "The secret is just getting up and doing the same thing every day. We're grinders," says a co-founder.

By Laura Lyon
| 5:00 a.m. April 18, 2025
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Ryan Fagerquist, an employee of Sammy's Seafood, moves fishy inventory around the freezer warehouse.

Tampa Bay-Lakeland

Emilio and Katie Sosa suddenly had a lot more mouths to feed.

The husband and wife duo met while working for the Florida Marine Research Institute in 1998 and decided to start Sammy’s Seafood — named after their pup, Sammy — in 2002. They started the company in their garage, when Katie was laid off from her position at the institute and pregnant with the couple’s first child. Within a year the couple was expecting again — this time with triplets.