- June 16, 2025
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Just a few days after Memorial Day last month, Coca-Cola Beverages Florida invited more than 100 people to Tampa.
It was for a grand opening event.
This was the kind of affair where prominent local attorneys, a former Tampa mayor, the current Tampa mayor, economic development officials from two counties, business and nonprofit leaders and the Tampa Bay Buccaneers cheerleaders all gathered under a tent in the Florida heat and swatted away bugs.
While it was festive, attendees were also there to mark a big step for the Coca-Cola bottler and distributor, which is marking its 10th year in business in 2025: The opening of a new 800,000-square-foot sales and automated warehouse center and a 250,000-square-foot fleet maintenance facility.
The more than $300 million project sits on 156 acres of what was a former cow farm in Hillsborough County on U.S. Highway 301, just off the Selmon Expressway.
The company, which actually began working out of the facility in December, employs 400 there and will distribute more than 16 million cases annually of Coca-Cola products from the new facility.
“The effort to stand up a building like this and the automation is phenomenal, right? This is the first one we've done at Coke Florida, so in a lot of ways we were trying to figure it out as it went along,” says Jim Boyce, the territory general manager for the Tampa region. “We had some long days.”
The distribution and sales center was built over three years and replaces a smaller 200,000-square-foot distribution center at 4409 Madison Industrial Lane in the city.
One of the key differentiators, beyond size, is the automation at the new facility.
The cavernous warehouse floor is like an assembly line of yore laid across what looks like at least a couple of football fields. Its computerized system moves huge cases of Coca Cola products — from Fresca and Diet Coke to Fairlife milk and Topo Chico sparkling water — that will be shipped out across the West Coast of the state.
The products themselves are stacked neatly — and packed tightly — on pallets across the floor.
Employees at several points inspect and wrap the shipments to prepare them to move on, but the system is mostly automated.
Coke Florida, as the company is known, says before the new center opened, employees would pick about 1,500 cases per hour, bending over and pushing pallet jacks. The automation allows the company to move up to 6,000 cases per hour — a 300% increase in productivity that also allows it to grow and be more reliable for customers. It also allows for the company and its employees to be more productive.
But, officials stress, the automation is not a job killer.
“A lot of people hear about automation (and think): ‘Robots. They're taking our jobs. The boogeyman is out there,’” says Jason Reed, senior vice president of the Coke Florida’s product supply network.
“We did not lay off one person in this process. That's important. This is about growth into the future.”
In addition to the distribution, the new facility also has space for the sales team, with offices and conference rooms. There is also a breakroom with indoor and outdoor seating, training areas and a nature trail on the campus.
Coke Florida, which services nearly the entire state and is Coca Cola’s sixth largest Coca-Cola bottler in the United States, was founded in 2015. It is based in Tampa, and, according to Forbes, Coke Florida's revenue was $2 billion in 2024.
It is also one of the largest Black-owned businesses in the country. That owner is Troy Taylor, a former banker who worked on the financing side of the beverage distribution industry for 20 years. Taylor, who also played basketball at Marshall University before going into a career in finance, was awarded a rare opportunity to buy into a Coca-Cola bottling operation a decade ago. Prior to Taylor, distribution of Coke products in Florida was handled through a Coca-Cola corporate entity.
According to the company, Coke Florida's territory covers over 21 million consumers across 47 counties in Florida and employs 5,000 people. The Tampa center services customers from Spring Hill in the north, down to Sarasota in the south, east to Polk County and west to St Pete/Clearwater.
The new center is one of four large distribution centers serving what project director Joe Carroll calls Coke Florida’s “different orbits.”
In addition to Tampa, the other orbits are in Orlando, Broward County and Jacksonville.
Carroll describes the systems as a “kind of hub and spoke” model, with the large distribution centers sending products out to smaller facilities. The company also operates four manufacturing centers — bottling facilities.
Carroll's specialty is construction, and he led the building project for the new Tampa center.
Carroll says one of the toughest parts of building this facility was the environmental remediation process because it had been a cow farm for so many years. That process included squeezing water out of the soil.
To do this, Coke Florida shipped in tons of dirt it then spread out across the acreage where buildings would be erected. The pile was as high as the eventual facility would be.
The idea was for the weight of the dirt to push the water out of the soil. It took about six months to complete.
When that was complete, Carroll says the construction project began and included more than 3,000 tons of steel and 70,000 yards of concrete. In addition to the buildings, the company built 6.4 acres of wetlands, 20 acres of ponds and either planted or preserved over 800 trees.
“At its peak, this project had a daily staff over 200 individuals, with many starting as apprentices and progressing upwards,” he says. “By the end of the project, in total, well over 350,000-man hours were worked at this site.”
One of the most important features of the new sales and distribution center, meanwhile, is something those in attendance for the ceremonial grand opening were unlikely to notice, says Boyce, the territory general manager for the Tampa region.
It was not built on a flood zone.
The previous distribution center was built in Flood Zone A and over the past five years it had to be evacuated five times. That meant getting all the company’s power equipment, its trucks and its trailers out and to a safe location. Then, when the threat passed, bringing everything back.
The work was grueling. It also disrupted operations.
The new building is also built to handle category 4 winds and is equipped with two massive generators that can power the entire building.
One piece of the project that is noticeable, however, is how much of the 156 acres of land went unused.
That’s no accident. Coke Florida built the distribution center on about a third of the property, saving the rest for future growth.
That growth, Taylor told those in attendance at the opening event, is part of its long-term plans.
And when Taylor says long term, he means it in the most literal of senses.
“This is a small, small down payment and token of us saying we’re going to be here forever,” says Taylor, the company’s founder, chairman and CEO. “We have much more to do. We’re not just serving beverages to our consumers, not just being great partners to our customers, but being an integral part of the fabric of the community each and every day.”
Editor's note: An announcement on Jim Boyce's promotion to vice president of manufacturing operations was released after this story was published.
