Greg Genitempo fillets a salmon while his brother Mark looks on with their grandfather, Joe Genitempo Sr. and father, Joe Jr., president of Magnolia Seafood.

This year will be a special Father’s Day for the Men of the Genitempo family – it’s the 85^th anniversary of their company, Magnolia Seafood, which began operations in an old tin shack at Allen’s Landing in 1907.

There’s been a lot of water (and fish) under the bridge since Julius Genitempo started the company.

At the time, Magnolia Brewery was the only cold storage facility in the city and Genitempo worked out a deal with brewery owner Hugh Hamilton to store fresh seafood there.

Genitempo purchased nine schooners in New York. They sailed back to Texas and were converted to snapper boats to fish the Gulf of Mexico. Snapper boats came up Buffalo Bayou
from Galveston and landed where today Main Street crosses over the bayou.

Fish was stored at the brewery, then sold in the city market (now Old Market Square). Fresh fish was first transported by horse and wagon, then by auto / trucks and later by rail on the “Browning” overnight train from Brownsville.

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When Joe Sr. took over in 1923, he relocated the business to a larger facility at LaBranch and Congress and added coolers and freezers.

In the ‘40s Magnolia moved to its present downtown location at 1901 Preston Ave., where four thermostatically controlled freezing units can now house about 230,000 pounds of seafood.

In the early days, the wooden transport barrels held shrimp, crab, oysters, flounder, trout, snapper and redfish and a few less popular varieties – drum, sheepshead and croaker.

 Now Magnolia handles more than 350 kinds of fish and seafood from all over the world – from mahi mahi from South America to salmon from Chile and Norway. Consumers, especially those with health concerns, are eating more fish.

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Magnolia wholesales to most of Houston’s best restaurants, hotels, caterers, hospitals and supermarkets – “our customers are much more aware of quality than they were 15-20 years ago and they insist on freshness and top quality,” Joe Jr. said.

“Laws have changed so much (there is hardly any commercial fishing in Texas anymore) so we have to go elsewhere. We can’t even import redfish from Mexico or Louisiana -  the only redfish we can sell comes from aquafarms, and there’s not enough to meet the demand,” he said.

New technology, such as vacuum packing and icing fish down as soon as it is caught, helps keep fish fresher longer, he said.

Joe Jr. became president in 1984 and his two sons came into the business as they grew up and graduated from the University of Texas. Greg is vice president and general manager; Mark is secretary-treasurer and sales coordinator.