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The Florida Department of Citrus is hoping its remade Captain Citrus mascot will help give orange-juice consumption a jolt. Florida Department of Citrus/Reuters
Plagued by plummeting demand for their juice and a deadly tree disease, Florida's orange growers are calling on a higher power. His name is Captain Citrus.
Earlier this month, the Florida Department of Citrus revamped its mascot with the help of Marvel Entertainment from a green-caped orange wielding a carton of juice to a muscular young man in a skintight yellow-and-orange suit, powered by the sun.
The agency, which is funded by a tax on oranges grown in Florida, hopes a series of custom comic books featuring Captain Citrus alongside the rest of Marvel's popular Avengers characters will help recruit a new generation of orange-juice drinkers.
With Americans giving orange juice the cold shoulder, producers and growers are looking for ways to refresh its image. As dietary awareness has grown, the sugar content of the onetime breakfast-table staple has damaged its reputation as a health drink. And it is getting crowded out of the beverage aisle by upstarts including coconut water, açai juice and energy drinks.
Per capita orange-juice consumption is down 45% from its 1998 peak, having fallen to 3.2 gallons a person in 2012 from 5.8 gallons 16 years ago, according to the most recent data from the U.S. Department of Agriculture.
Orange juice's waning popularity presents a challenge to PepsiCo Inc.,maker of Tropicana, and Coca-Cola Co. , which produces the Minute Maid and Simply brands.
In its second-quarter earnings release at the end of July, Coke said sales volume in its still-beverage category, which includes teas, waters, sports drinks and juices, grew 5% world-wide during the quarter. That was no thanks to the company's juice and juice-drink sales, which suffered a 1% decline "stemming from price increases taken in North America to cover higher input costs."
Pepsi doesn't break out its juice results.
Orange-juice makers have been paying more for the fruit due to limited supplies after a bacterial disease—so-called citrus greening—ravaged the U.S. crop.
For the season that ends this month, Florida produced its smallest crop in 29 years. Meanwhile, consumers are having to pay more; for the four weeks ended Aug. 30, orange juice prices averaged $6.46 a gallon, up 4.5% from a year earlier, according to data from Nielsen.
Coke did boost sales in its juice division last year after introducing new blends under its Simply brand, including combinations of orange with banana and lemonade with blueberry, the company said.
Beverage companies also are experimenting with diluting their juice. Pepsi sells Trop50, which it markets as the lower-sugar, lower-calorie version of its Tropicana brand, made with alternative sweetener from the stevia plant, an herb native to parts of South America. Coke offers a 50-calorie version of Minute Maid that is 42% orange juice.
Both Pepsi and Coke are already grappling with weak sales growth in their flagship sodas as more consumers turn away from sugary beverages. The beverage industry's response—an ever-widening array of new options, like energy drinks and vitamin water—is serving to hasten orange juice's decline, analysts say.
In August, Coke announced a $2.15 billion investment for a 16.7% stake in energy-drink maker Monster Beverage Corp.
The growing list of beverage options on the market will make it hard for orange juice sales to recover even if sugar fears ease, analysts say.
"Orange juice is at risk of becoming a niche product," said Ross Colbert, global beverage strategist at Rabobank in New York. That said, orange juice is still a $3.5 billion business in the U.S., and companies aren't giving up on it.
"The [juice] category provides us with great opportunity to continue to diversify, whether it's by adding additional line extensions, flavor options or creating more light options," a Coca-Cola spokesperson said. The company also has expanded into other areas, like coconut water. In November, Coke completed its acquisition of Zico, a from-concentrate coconut water that comes in multiple flavors. Pepsi acquired not-from-concentrate O.N.E. Coconut Water in 2012.
Orange juice's biggest selling point—that it is a good source of vitamin C—has been overshadowed in recent years by Americans' growing aversion to products with high sugar content. One 8-ounce glass of orange juice contains about 22 grams of sugar, roughly the same as a Hershey's Mr. Goodbar chocolate bar.
Enter Captain Citrus, who—as a costumed character—visits elementary schools in Florida to talk up orange juice's nutritional value. The state citrus agency also has produced television ads touting orange juice as a pick-me-up at any time of day. Sportscaster Erin Andrews, enlisted as a spokeswoman, in August hosted a football-themed event in Manhattan encouraging consumers to use orange juice in game-day foods, such as a marinade for chicken.
Orange trees were brought to Florida by the Spanish. It wasn't until World War II that large-scale production began, after scientists hit upon frozen, concentrated orange juice as a tasty, easily transportable source of vitamin C for soldiers. Their invention hit the consumer market after the war.
Not-from-concentrate orange juice exploded in the 1980s after Tropicana launched a marketing blitz extolling the virtues of its never-frozen juice. Today, reconstituted, or from-concentrate, juice makes up only 40% of the overall orange-juice market, down from 48% a decade ago.
In 2001, the American Academy of Pediatrics began recommending parents serve less fruit juice to young children and steer them to whole fruit instead, which is higher in fiber and contains less sugar per serving.
Orange juice was nowhere to be found at the YMCA in the Greenpoint section of Brooklyn one morning in September, where staff had set out bananas, tangerines and other healthy snacks to attract new members. The only beverage on offer: bottled water.
"When I was younger ... orange juice was the go-to health drink," said Carlos Davila, 37 years old, who oversees exercise programs at the Greenpoint YMCA. After speaking with nutritionists, he now recommends gym members concerned about sugar opt for water instead of juice.
Fruit and vegetable juices' share of the U.S. beverage market, measured in dollars, has fallen to 17% from 24% in 1999. The sports- and energy-drinks category has surged to 16% from 5% of the market over that same period.
Not all companies are as dedicated to juice as Coke and Pepsi. In June, Nestlé SA sold its Juicy Juice brand to a private-equity firm in an effort to focus on core businesses like coffee and candy. Others are trying to diversify.
Cutrale Group of Brazil, one of the world's largest growers and processors of oranges—and a chief supplier for Coca-Cola's juice brands—in August proposed to buy U.S. banana giant Chiquita Brands International Inc.
Dan Sleep, chief of the Bureau of Strategic Development at the Florida Department of Agriculture, concedes that increasing consumption of orange juice is a challenge.
The state's citrus department doesn't have the marketing muscle it used to. Its domestic marketing budget is $17.1 million this year, half what it was a decade ago, due to smaller crops. "I don't know how you reverse the [falling] consumption of the juices," said Mr. Sleep. "There's just a huge number of things to choose from."