Photo by Jacob Ogles: Tervis unveiled new products including its first bowls.

The insulated walls and familiar horizontal lines that define the Tervis brand have officially come out of this region for a half century. Tervis officials marked the Golden Anniversary since relocating to Osprey with the unveil of new bowls and steel products this weekend. With the brand increasingly seen as a fixture not only of life on the Gulf Coast but manufacturing in America, Venice Mayor John Holic even declared May 19 as Tervis Day in the city. “We want you to stay here for at least another 50 years,” Holic told officials in a ceremony Friday.

For the moment, Tervis CEO Rogan Donelly says the company has no plans to make its cups anywhere else. “We don’t plan to expand to other manufacturing facilities,” Donelly says. The company first started making cups in 1946 in Detroit, but after John Winslow bought the company, he relocated it to Florida in 1968. Festivities celebrating that move were held this weekend at the Osprey store where Tervis first made cups here. While manufacturing has since moved to a major plant in North Venice near Interstate-75, the Osprey locale still serves as the largest Tervis store in the country.

The anniversary included the launch of Tervis’ first-ever products that don’t count as drink ware. A line of bowls with signature insulated walls first debuted to press Friday and became available on Tervis’ website and the Osprey store starting on Saturday.

The company also unveiled a new line of National Football League designs for tumblers and water bottles, as well as several new designs for steel products, introduced into Tervis offerings for the first time last year. Both the bowls and steel products, Donelly says, stemmed from consumer demands. “There’s a trend in the marketplace with stainless steel and we had to react,” he says. Similar, loyal Tervis customers for years sought products that reached into the whole kitchen, and the bowls may be the first step in helping consumers both drink and dine from Tervis products.

Meanwhile, Donelly says the increasingly important licenses used for Tervis continue to grow. The press event Friday included new Harry Potter designs, while Donelly touted Puppy Love and Jeep licensing that adds on to the many sports franchises and entertainment names already available in the Tervis inventory.

Meanwhile, celebration of the Tervis Golden Anniversary continues in the area with a hunt for special golden tumblers hidden in Sarasota and Venice that contain two free tickets to tour the Tervis plant and make your own tumbler. One of the tumblers remains hidden at the SRQ Media Group offices on Pineapple Avenue in Downtown Sarasota.

Photo by Jacob Ogles: Tervis unveiled new products including its first bowls.