Tampa Florida is known as the Cigar City but high volume cigar making in the area is practically over. | Eastern North Carolina Now

    Tampa Florida is known as the Cigar City but high volume cigar making in the area is practically over/

    Back during the CB craze almost every city had a CB handle. Tampa was the Cigar City and probably still is, but its biggest cigar producer closed down in 2009.



    My company transferred me to Tampa Florida in 1975 and I called on the industrial plants from Tropicana to the phosphate mines in the Lakeland area. There were also many food processing plants in the area as well as two Large Breweries. However, one of the more interesting plants was the Hav-a-Tampa cigar plant in Tampa.

   

    Hav-a-Tampa cigars occupied the nitch of machine made cheap cigars. Most people would be familiar with their brands, Tampa Jewel and Tampa Nugget. The Nugget was my dad's favorite cigar until my brother and I spoiled him on Makers Mark Bourbon Infused Cigars.

   

    At $10 per cigar vs his Nuggets which I think only cost about 50 cents apiece, the move up to Makers Mark would not have been my dad's choice, but since he was not paying for them he did not complain. My dad did really did not smoke the cigars initially, he more or less lit them and then chewed his way to the ash end. He developed a taste for the Makers Mark cigars later. They came in a glass tube to keep them moist.

    Hav-a-Tampa made their first cigar in Tampa in 1902. In July, 2009 they made their last. The closing of the factory left 500 employees without jobs. Such is the nature of the ebb and flow of business. A 5-cent tax was bumped up to about 40 cents on large cigars, with a lesser increase for smaller cigars. Hav-a-Tampa cigars are now made outside the USA where there is no onerous tobacco tax. The company continues to make the Hav-A-Tampa brand in Puerto Rico.

    Click here to see the full article from the Tampa Bay news.

    There are still a few companies in Tampa making hand rolled Cigars. I am interested in seeing if the new open relations with Cuba will rejuvenate the Tampa cigar industry or will it just be another thing of the past that we look back on with some fondness. Life goes on.

    Here is a link to the hand making of Cigars in Tampa