Sweetening Sales of Florida Citrus : Promotional Spending Grows as Demand Starts to Sour

Americans are losing their taste for orange juice and the demand for fresh grapefruit has soured at a time when the Florida groves are laden with a bumper crop.

And that has the billion-dollar Florida citrus industry worried, worried enough to fight back with a proposed $72-million promotional campaign.

For the first time since such statistics have been kept, retail sales of orange juice--Florida’s premier citrus product--have declined two years in a row. So has the demand for grapefruit juice, but that’s not as serious since much less of the crop goes into juice.

Orange juice is facing increased competition from other juices, diluted products and soft drinks, says Dan Gunter, executive director of the Florida Citrus Department.

Image makers have some concerns about fresh fruit, too.

“Fresh citrus products lack identity, especially fresh grapefruit,” Gunter told the Florida Citrus Commission recently.

Market Share Drops

The department, charged with the promotion and marketing of the state’s fresh and processed citrus products, is proposing some hard-hitting programs and increased budgets for the 1988-89 season.

Merchandising and publicity campaigns are being mounted to try to convince people that orange juice is just as refreshing as any other beverage and probably much better for them.

“We want to maintain orange juice as the gold standard of juices,” says the Citrus Department’s marketing director, Bill Gordon.

Surveys show that the orange juice market share dropped 6 percentage points from 1980 to 1987, while apple juice gained 6 points. Orange juice sales are at 59% of the juice market, with apple juice solidifying its hold on second place at 17%.

Florida expects to produce 140 million 90-pound boxes of oranges this season, 90% of which will go into processed juices.

The current grapefruit crop is estimated at a near record 53 million 85-pound boxes, with production expected to soar to about 60 million boxes by the mid-1990s. Most of the state’s export grapefruit is grown in the Indian River section of the citrus belt.

Excellent growing conditions (ample rainfall early in the season and mild winter weather) have resulted in outstanding crops since the 1983 and 1985 freezes, which devastated the northern sections of the citrus belt.

“There can be little doubt left that our industry is making a strong recovery from problems encountered earlier this decade,” Gunter says.

Dour and Sour

The projected orange crop for this season would be the largest since the 1980-81 season, when 172 million boxes were picked. “The fruit just kept right on growing,” says Bob Terry, citrus statistician with the Florida Agricultural Statistics Service in Orlando.

In the coming season, the department wants to spend $39.4 million to promote orange juice sales, a 17.3% hike over the current $33.6 million.

The problem is rather more complicated with grapefruit, fresh or otherwise, since it is seen as dour and sour, an unglamorous sort of lump for today’s life styles.

A recent study shows that Americans have quit spooning up the tarty fresh fruit by almost two pounds per capita since the 1970s. Some say it is no longer trendy and that nutrition-conscious consumers have forgotten about it in favor of more glitzy--and more heavily promoted--products.

Gunter and his crew want to “develop an image and identity” for fresh grapefruit in the modern world, making it, in computer terms, more “user friendly.”

About half of the grapefruit crop is sold as fresh fruit.

For the even more difficult job of selling 100% pure grapefruit juice, special TV commercials are being test-marketed in support of merchandising and public relations campaigns to explain the health benefits of grapefruit juice over other juices and beverages.

The commercials emphasize the “unique,” “clean-tasting” and “invigorating” attributes of the juice and are aimed primarily at women 25-54, a category of steady users.

Exports Higher

The proposed budget for promoting processed grapefruit juice is $11.6 million, up 62.1% from the $7.2 million being spent this season.

The department’s proposed fresh fruit spending plan for 1988-89 is $21.7 million, an increase of 38.7% from the current $15.7 million.