Drive Thru Feed: 15 years of service on the Key

Jerry Davis started his business 15 years ago. He did not intend to open a feed store, but that’s what it is.

Davis was born in Oklahoma City, Oklahoma. At the age of 17, he enlisted in the U.S. Army and became Airborne qualified. He saw combat with two tours in Vietnam and later in the Dominican Republic.

Between 1978, when Davis retired from the Army, and 1985 when he moved to the Key Peninsula, Davis operated an underwater marine salvage business, towed marine freight, was a police chief in Wittier, Alaska, attended International Bible College in Hawaii, sold vinyl siding and managed a restaurant in Arizona.

Davis also worked in food service for the state prison system in Purdy and Shelton before he purchased his current business site (at the intersection of SR-302 and Wright-Bliss Road) in 1989, where he intended to construct and operate a restaurant.

In 2000, the restaurant site was still an empty lot when he learned he would loose his commercial zoning if he did not immediately start operating a business on the site.

Davis started a swap meet.

Seeing as how it rains in Washington, he set up tents and constructed buildings for the swap meet vendors. Those many buildings have since been rearranged for his current Drive Thru Feed business.

“One day one of my swap meet customers was extremely upset about something, so I asked what her troubles were,”Davis said. “It turned out that she was upset and offended over terrible service that she had received from a local feed store.”