Has OJ lost its mojo?
Customers are complaining about Tropicana’s new bottle design, after years of falling orange-juice consumption.
Orange juice has been the vibrant, vitamin-rich cornerstone of breakfasts and brunches in America for more than five decades, after a glut of the fruit in states like Florida last century gave rise to innovations in extracting and concentrating its nectar.
However, in recent years, a series of poor harvests has seen production falter and the price of OJ soar. At the time of writing, the price of frozen concentrated OJ futures is ~$4.80 per pound, per MarketWatch — roughly 5x where it was trading in 2020.
Club Tropicana, drinks aren’t free
The latest blow to pocket-squeezed fans, though, is not the juice itself, but from Tropicana, America’s leading brand of OJ. The company recently redesigned its containers, replacing the iconic 52-ounce “carafe” with a narrower 46-ounce bottle.
Though Tropicana says that the price of the new bottle will be lowered to reflect its size, some customers are considering boycotting the brand on the basis of “shrinkflation,” or companies charging the same price for less product. Despite Tropicana’s explanation that retailers may not have updated prices yet, the damage to its brand may have already been done: a notorious redesign in 2009 was met with similar vitriol, costing the company an estimated $30 million over just two months.
But even without objections pertaining to packaging, consumers have lost some of their zest for the drink.
According to CNN, Tropicana’s sales had tumbled 19% year on year in October, and data from the USDA tells a similar story: consumption of OJ in the US has been dropping. So, why are Americans turning away from OJ?
Prices aside, one factor is that eating habits have shifted away from home cooking and toward convenience. Since OJ is typically drunk in the morning, there’s less room for leisurely sipping a glass in light of the grab-and-go approach of modern life (see also: the meteoric rise of ready-to-eat Uncrustables).
Beyond this, a big selling point of OJ has long been its nutritional value, particularly as a source of vitamin C. But now, concerns over its sugar content — The Food Institute reported that a single 12-ounce glass contains 9 teaspoons of sugar, about the same as a can of Coke — may be putting off health-conscious consumers.
