Photo Illustration: Kelda Van Patten for Bloomberg Businessweek
After years on the sidelines, eggs have brushed off high-cholesterol fears as Americans seek out more protein. Butter, for decades passed over for margarine, is back on the US breakfast table, too. Even cottage cheese, that chunky, polarizing epitome of old-school diet culture, is once more in the fridge.
Orange juice is still waiting for its comeback.
Consumption of OJ in the US—by far the beverage’s biggest market—has more than halved since peaking in the late 1990s. Demand hit an all-time low in 2024. With today’s ever-shifting diets—protein’s in! red dye’s out!—any food can fall out of fashion. But orange juice’s attempted climb back to relevance has been particularly challenging.
Some modern shoppers are skeptical of the beverage’s nutritional benefits, especially since they can inadvertently drink several fruits’ worth of sugar in just one glass. OJ is also getting slammed by inflation because of Florida’s worsening hurricanes and crop disease that have pummeled recent harvests. Frozen concentrate averaged a record $4.24 per pound in the US last year, almost 30% more than the year before, according to US Bureau of Labor Statistics data. Suppliers are feeling the squeeze, with more farmers ripping up their groves and selling their prime Florida real estate to condo developers instead.
Juice makers are trying to get back into people’s refrigerators by spending more on marketing and rolling out a steady stream of products. Tropicana, the biggest OJ brand in the US, reintroduced its stevia-sweetened Tropicana Light (formerly Trop50) line in 2023 to appeal to carb-conscious buyers, and it plans to start selling a blended orange juice in March: a lower-cost mix of orange, apple and pear juice—plus water—dubbed Tropicana Essentials. The new offering will be 80% juice, contain no added sugar and sell for $3.89 for 46 ounces, compared to $4.69 for its Pure Premium line of 100% orange juice.
“All the research we’re focused against is delivering that taste of fresh orange that explodes on your tongue and delivering that mouthfeel that people love about orange juice as well the right texture,” says Tina Lambert, chief marketing officer at Tropicana Brands Group, which took just nine months to bring Essentials from idea to shelf. “That’s what the R&D team has done.”
Tropicana and other brands in the supermarket aisle. Photographer: Richard B. Levine/Zuma Press
At Coca-Cola Co., the Minute Maid brand has expanded beyond traditional juices into bright aguas frescas and fruity wine cocktails. The company’s juice brands sit in the same division as its Fairlife milk beverages, opening the door to other possibilities, too. “Are there places where juice and dairy could potentially come together—like, is that an interesting space for innovation?” Becca Kerr, head of Coca-Cola’s nutrition unit, said in an interview this past summer. Coca-Cola declined to comment further.
For years, OJ innovation was just around the edges—pulp or no pulp, added calcium, 100% juice or not. But today’s shoppers want more from their beverages. They’re increasingly gravitating toward foods that offer extra benefits beyond refreshment, such as caffeine, electrolytes, nutrients or protein, and many are willing to pay a premium for health.
Independent juice maker Uncle Matt’s Organic has been leaning into that consumer search for so-called “functional ingredients.” During the Covid-19 pandemic, it launched an “Ultimate Immune” orange juice infused with elderberry, vitamin D and zinc that still sees an annual sales spike each year around cold and flu season, says founder Matt McLean. Another OJ-based drink from its lineup includes turmeric and probiotics to help with digestion. The pandemic-era increase in demand has held for the company’s products, even as the retail price for a 52-ounce bottle has jumped from $6 four years ago to as high as $10 now, McLean says.
A Minute Maid OJ concentrate can from 1965. Source: Division of Work and Industry/National Museum of American History/Smithsonian Institution
At the other end of the price spectrum, shoppers can—and do—still buy frozen cylinders of the concentrated stuff, which first brought orange juice to the masses in the years following World War II. Demand for OJ picked up through the second half of the 20th century thanks to heavy marketing, including a national campaign featuring Bing Crosby, a sponsorship with Mickey Mantle and a Florida OJ-tasting pavilion with live porpoises at the 1964 New York World’s Fair. The proliferation of not-from-concentrate juices in the 1990s and early 2000s only added to the appeal. Demand grew and grew until US households were drinking 1.1 million metric tons of OJ a year at its peak in 1998.
A postcard of a Minute Maid plant in Florida, circa 1950s. Source: State of Archives of Florida
But then nutritionists started sounding the alarm: Juicing fruits, instead of eating them whole, removes fiber that helps slow the absorption of sugar into the bloodstream. The American Academy of Pediatrics now says 6 ounces of 100% fruit juice should be the maximum for kids under 7, with none recommended for infants. That’s a big turnaround from the previous decades, when some parents used to send kids to cribs suckling on a bottle of juice. Orange juice made a brief comeback during the first year of Covid, when shoppers looking for any way to ward off the virus turned to OJ for its immune-boosting vitamin C. Unit sales of refrigerated orange juice jumped about 15% from 2019 to 2020, data from researcher Circana show. But since then, sales of the juice, which has been unable to shake off its sugary sheen, have been steadily down.
Tropicana has developed a “myth-busting” campaign using online influencers to reassure consumers that its Pure Premium line doesn’t have any added sugar. It faces pressure on other fronts, too: S&P Global Ratings recently downgraded the company’s credit rating to CCC, citing a continued decline in profitability, persisting cash burn and a heightened risk of a default or debt restructuring over the next year. Tropicana Brands Group is majority owned by private equity firm PAI Partners, with former owner PepsiCo Inc. retaining the rest.
Another possible blow to the industry: President Donald Trump’s potential trade disputes with the US’s closest neighbors. Canada, by far the biggest destination for US orange juice exports, targeted the beverage in its retaliation plan after the US administration floated 25% tariffs on the country—threatening the more than $100 million worth of orange juice that flows north of the border every year. Orange juice from Mexico—which helps fill gaps in US production—would cost more if the new tariffs take effect, too.
Even if the industry succeeds in its efforts to stoke demand with new products, brand refreshes and internet-forward gimmicks— mimosa maker, anyone?—it still has one more major problem to solve: Getting enough oranges in the first place. Farmers have been fighting a tree-killing citrus disease called greening in both the US and Brazil for years, with little luck. Florida, the top OJ-making state, is expected to produce only 12 million boxes of its state fruit this year, the fewest since 1930. That keeps grocery store juice prices high for consumers who aren’t sure they even want to buy the stuff in the first place.
A Tropicana truck in Bradenton, Florida, circa 1950. Source: State Archives of Florida
In fall 2024, it appeared the orange supply could be turning a corner. Breakthroughs with antibiotics and tree breeding were looking promising at the same time Florida’s groves were recovering from Hurricane Ian two years prior and Irma five years before that. But Hurricane Milton’s brash arrival in October was one punch too many for some growers. As the storm slammed the state, branches snapped off trees; oranges littered the ground, still unripe and unsalvageable. About three months later, Tropicana supplier Alico Inc. announced it would exit the citrus business and would use the land instead for other types of farming or real estate development.
Orange trees damaged by Hurricane Ian in 2022 at a grove in Charlotte County, Florida. Photographer: Tristan Wheelock/Bloomberg
“We’ve never skimped on any of the caretaking costs. Our trees always got the best that we could possibly provide for them—and unfortunately, production continues to decline,” says Alico Chief Executive Officer John Kiernan. “We are disappointed, because we’ve tried everything available to us to sustain our success in citrus.” — With Brett Pulley