Tropicana orange juice fans aren’t happy about the brand’s latest redesign, which replaced the plastic bottle’s carafe-like look with a smaller, traditional-looking container, shrinking the portion size by 6 ounces. However, customers say that while the size has gone down, the prices haven’t.
Tropicana said on its website that it lowered the manufacturer’s suggested retail price from $4.69 to $3.99, but, “It is possible that for a brief time, retailers have not adjusted their on-shelf pricing while transitioning from our old to new packaging.”
However, some customers aren’t buying the excuse, and are accusing Tropicana of charging more for less—aka, shrinkflation. (One unhappy OJ drinker griped on X, “Midnight Musings. I am no fan of the redesign of the Tropicana Orange Juice Bottle. Same price but went from 52 ounces to 46 ounces.”)
The other thing customers aren’t buying is Tropicana Orange Juice. Bottles have been sitting on supermarket shelves since the rebrand rolled out over the summer, with sales dropping a whopping 10.9% in August, and plummeting 19% by October, according to market research firm Circana as reported by CNN.
In addition to adjusting the multi-serving bottles, Tropicana also reduced the size of its single-serving bottles, moving from 12 to 11 ounces. Yet, the price for this bottle remains the same.
“The consumer is always at the center of our decision-making,” Tropicana said in a statement on its website. “Because of that, we redesigned our bottles to directly address their concerns around ease of opening, ease of handling, storage and desire for less plastic, as well as offering more affordable juice options.”
This isn’t the first time customers have revolted against a Tropicana rebrand. Fifteen years ago, fans protested when the OJ maker overhauled the brand’s iconic orange logo (which is seen pierced by a red-and-white-striped straw) and flipped it vertically. Customers hated that rebrand so much, Tropicana pulled the cartons from shelves.
So, why all the rebrands and attempts to change Tropicana’s look and size?
It might be the latest battle in the “orange juice wars,” as PepsiCo’s Tropicana brand tries to retain its number one position over Coca-Cola’s Simply brand. The rivalry is not unlike the cola wars that have kept these two companies competing over market share for more than a century.
In fact, the reason PepsiCo ditched Tropicana’s cardboard cartons for plastic carafes was “because they looked more like rival Coca-Cola’s Simply juice brand orange juice,” according to the Wall Street Journal.
In 2023, PepsiCo’s Tropicana brand beat out Coca-Cola’s Simply brand in refrigerated orange juice dollar sales, per Statista, but not by much ($969.1 million compared to $887.2 million).
