M&B Products Continues Family Tradition

Dale McClellan remembers his childhood days on his family’s dairy farm at 8601 Harney Road.

He was about 12 or 14 when the Tampa Bypass Canal split their land. He used to trap quail back there for the Greco family who owned Kash n’ Karry (now ).

McClellan, 57, is now the president of M&B Products, an operation on the old farm that distributes milk, juice and related products to schools, hospitals, prisons and other institutions in 33 states. The the property.

The company has about 150 employees at its 140-acre Temple Terrace processing facility and nearly 700 cows at its 320-acre farm in Lecanto where the milk comes from. Cows are milked three times a day, and the facility can milk 24 cows at a time.

Continuing the family’s dairy roots is important to McClellan, according to a story that appeared on the Florida Department of Agriculture website in 2004. The family-run business spans four generations.

McClellan said he considers himself an environmentalist, and the company prides itself on manufacturing environmentally friendly products. Its juice is contained in plastic sip pouches, which allow 40 percent more inventory per truckload and can be flattened when empty and recycled to reduce trash by about 2.3 million pounds per year.

“We have evolved from a messy old dairy to a very green company,” McClellan said.

To learn more about M&B Products’ operation, watch the video posted with this story, or a video that was produced by the Florida Department of Agriculture in 2004.