Dive Brief:
- Grapefruit is next on the list for Californians Stewart and Lynda Resnick and their company, the Wonderful Co., as plans to popularize this often polarizing fruit take shape.
- Wonderful has purchased Texas grapefruit groves, packing houses, and a processing plant, and the company debuted new planting and pruning methods for a Texas-born variety dubbed Rio Red, with its deep red flesh and high sugar content. The Resnicks have since rebranded Rio Reds as Wonderful Sweet Scarletts and hosted events to showcase celebrity recipes created for the revamped citrus.
- Wonderful may have their work cut out for them, as U.S. consumption for the bitter fruit decreased significantly from 9 pounds per capita in 1976 to only 2 pounds in 2014, according to USDA data.
Dive Insight:
Wonderful faces other bitter issues with popularizing grapefruit.
"The preference these days is for food that’s sweet and convenient, traits for which the hard-to-peel grapefruit is not generally known. What’s more, since 1999 the U.S. Food and Drug Administration has warned about potential dangers, including kidney failure, of consuming grapefruit or its juice while taking certain cholesterol-lowering drugs," Bloomberg reported.
Wonderful has proven itself in the past by making "a lot of money turning unassuming agricultural commodities into well-known brands, most famously the pomegranate and the mandarin. They think their magic can work on the grapefruit, a hybrid born in Barbados in the 17th Century and often derided since," according to Bloomberg. The Resnicks' Halos brand mandarins have succeeded on $100 million marketing spending.
Wonderful began its journey with its first grapefruit acquisition in 2012, when the company purchased Healds Valley Farms, a large Texas-based grower. Today, Wonderful owns nearly three-quarters of Texas grapefruit production, a key grapefruit state as the second-largest U.S. grapefruit producer, following only citrus stronghold Florida.