Innovation is at the center of Ocean Spray's growth. The juice maker has been through ups and
downs, but the company constantly keeps pushing the boundaries with its products, most of which
involve cranberries in one way or another. Here's what you really need to know about Ocean Spray.
It isn't hard to buy a can of jellied cranberry sauce or dried cranberries in the peak of summer,
even though cranberries are harvested only between mid-September and mid-November in North America.
This is thanks to advancements in science and a man named Marcus L. Urann,
who convinced other independent cranberry growers,
namely John C. Makepeace and Elizabeth F. Lee, to join him and form a cooperative.
Urann became a full-time cranberry grower, bought a bog in Massachusetts,
set up cooking facilities, and came up with the first canned cranberry sauce.
Thus Ocean Spray was born.
"Ocean Spray is an agricultural cooperative. We are owned by our grower owners."
Ocean Spray Cooperative is made up of over 700 grower families in the United States,
Canada and Chile.
All growers own and manage their own farms — the average size of each farm being 18 acres.
More than half of these farms, according to a tweet by Ocean Spray, are owned by women.
Some examples include the 78-year-old Gottschalk Cranberry Inc. farm in Wisconsin
that is owned by Fawn Gottschalk who operates it with her parents.
Another example would be the Gilmore Cranberry Company, established in 1979. It's owned by
Sue Gilmore, who is also a descendent of one of the founding families of Ocean Spray — the A.D.
Makepeace family. Gilmore's grandchildren are seventh-generation cranberry farmers!
According to their website,
"25 percent of our farmers are fourth generation or greater."
One would imagine that a cooperative which is formed by cranberry growers would have
first launched fresh cranberries as their main product. But that's not the case.
It took Ocean Spray 16 years to introduce fresh cranberries as
one of the products that they sold. Their first product was canned cranberry sauce,
which to this day remains a popular Thanksgiving side dish.
A year after their launch, in 1931, they noted a growing interest in orange juice,
so they entered the beverage market with Cranberry Juice Cocktail.
According to a report, it was marketed as:
"A pleasant, smooth drink with delicious flavor and sure relief from faintness, exhaustion and
thirst. A glass when retiring promotes sleep and a clean mouth in the morning — even to the smoker."
Until the 1960s, Ocean Spray's most popular products remained
their canned sauce and fresh berries.
The juice cocktail saw only limited distribution,
which is why they put their creative caps back on, and came up with the first juice
blend in the world — cranberry apple juice, or Cranapple, as Ocean Spray titled it.
What followed was another hit combination, cranberry and grape, or Cran-Grape. Another
three decades would pass, before Craisins were introduced as a baking ingredient in the 1980s.
Ocean Spray had been in business for close to
three decades before the Cranberry Scare of 1959 threatened to end its existence.
A few months before Thanksgiving that year,
the U.S. Department of Health, Education and Welfare, or HEW,
announced that a weed killer called aminotriazole was responsible for causing cancer in lab animals.
This herbicide was used by a few cranberry growers. Ocean Spray was
quick to respond and ban the use of the herbicide. But, the fear had spread among
consumers who decided to keep away from the cranberries. Sales plummeted to record low,
especially in the holiday season when they would otherwise be at their peak.
What's unfortunate is that the scare was avoidable.
What the HEW didn't point out was that a person would need to eat 15,000 pounds of cranberries
every day for years to contract cancer. The main culprit behind the confusion
was the Delaney Clause, which banned all artificial substances that caused
cancer in lab animals from a food product. Unfortunately, the HEW failed to consider
that the trace amounts of herbicides did not affect humans the same way as they would rats.
So, finally, in 1996, herbicides and pesticides were removed from the Delaney Clause. But by then,
enough damage had been done, and it took some time for Ocean Spray to bounce back.
Ocean Spray has been championing the cause of health since the 1980s.
This was when they collaborated with the Women's
Sports Foundation to spread awareness about adopting healthy lifestyles.
In 1994, what also helped Ocean Spray brand their product as good for health was a Harvard Medical
Research study that showed that cranberries help keep Urinary Tract Infections at bay.
Ocean Spray used this study to fuel their initiative Cran-Health,
as part of which they sold low-calorie juice drinks with sucralose instead of sugar.
Cranberries, which are packed with vitamins, minerals, fiber, and antioxidants,
had risen to superfood status. And Ocean Spray milked this
new glory by introducing a line of beverages that focused on health.
In 2008, they launched Cran-Energy — a drink that combined real fruit juices mixed with green tea.
Less than a decade later, they came up with PACt Cranberry Extract water,
which used the nutritional extracts from cranberries that when consumed
help flush harmful bacteria out of the body.
Soon after, they introduced Cranberry +Health, which,
according to Ocean Spray's website, has the, quote, "highest concentration
of cranberry compounds available among Ocean Spray juice products."
The report quotes a study published in the American Journal of Clinical Nutrition that says,
"Drinking one 8-ounce glass of cranberry
juice per day can lower the number of recurrent symptomatic UTIs in women."
Ocean Spray has been on the lookout for new chefs and foodservice professionals who are keen to
adopt the humble berry into their everyday meals. In November 2019, Ocean Spray launched an
initiative called Cranberry Chef Collective that aims to connect
chefs with 700-plus farmer families that are part of the Ocean Spray cooperative.
The initiative was formed with the vision of exposing top chefs
to the workings of a cranberry farm, letting them know the fruit intimately,
and having them use the tart berries in their restaurant menus.
Who wouldn't be curious about a cranberry-apple cobbler pie on their dessert menu? The dish,
created by Chef Will Gilson of Puritan and Company, in Cambridge,
Massachusetts, uses cranberries for its filling.
Gilson is one of several chefs who are a part of the Collective. The other names include Irene
Li of Mei Mei in Boston, Massachusetts; Liam Lutrell Rowland of Spindler's in Provincetown,
Massachusetts; and Evan Mallet of Black Trumpet in Portsmouth, New Hampshire.
Thanks to Nathan Apodaca, a warehouse worker from Idaho,
Ocean Spray found its name trending on Social Media.
On September 25, 2020, Apodaca posted a video of himself longboarding to work
after his 2005 Dodge Durango broke down in the middle of the road.
The video, which garnered over 60 million views on TikTok, changed Apodaca's life forever.
Now, he is a social media celebrity with an agent. The impact, however, went beyond him.
The Fleetwood Mac song, which was released back in 1977,
climbed back to Billboard's top 100 list. And Ocean Spray got a sweet publicity boost.
Ocean Spray's chief executive Tom Hayes told Yahoo Finance:
"We have about 15 billion media impressions now."
He added,
"Retailers are telling us there is some additional draw
off the shelf, particularly with cran-raspberry."
What this means is that in just a couple of weeks after the video's release,
Ocean Spray's name had been searched 15 billion times.
While still basking on the video's popularity, the cooperative gave Apodaca a new Nissan pickup truck
and had Hayes take up the #doggfacechallenge where he emulated Apodaca on his skateboard,
while taking generous sips of Ocean Spray juice.
Ocean Spray's cranberries are 100 percent sustainably grown.
What this means is that the farmers who are part of the Ocean Spray
team grow their cranberries in a way that, according to a report:
"Protects and improves the natural environment, the social and economic conditions of farmers
and their communities, and safeguards the health and welfare of all farmed species."
A large amount of water is used to harvest the cranberries, as it's
much easier to get the cranberries off their vines when they are floating on the surface.
All the water, however, is reused in other parts of the farms as soon as the harvesting is done.
In order to limit the amount of water that is sourced out of a natural water system,
farmers share the same water between their farms.
They use soil moisture probes to ensure that they
don't use more water than they need. According to the website:
"For every 1 acre of growing cranberries,
Ocean Spray farmers manage an average of 5.4 acres of supporting lands and wetlands."
Moreover, the cooperative is also working with National Geographic to encourage
regenerative farming practices. According to Regeneration International, this involves:
"[Reversing] climate change by rebuilding soil organic matter and restoring degraded
soil biodiversity — resulting in both carbon drawdown and improving the water cycle."
Besides practicing sustainable agriculture,
Ocean Spray also thought about the lifecycle of the packages in which it sells its products.
For example, they've acknowledged the fact that the plastic bags in
which they sell Craisins can have a negative impact on the environment.
"Ocean Spray actually takes all of the cranberries that can't be used
and gives them to a soil manufacturer."
So, the cooperative has partnered with a waste management company called TerraCycle,
which can make sure that you buy multiple bags of Craisins without a trace of guilt.
The partnership between the two companies
allows Ocean Spray customers to send their empty Craisin bags to TerraCycle,
in exchange for points that can be used towards helping out a non-profit organization or school.
The plastic bags will be melted and remolded to make new products such
as park benches or picnic tables, according to the TerraCycle website.
Ocean Spray is also working with TerraCycle to
develop reusable packaging through its Loop platform.
Under this platform, customers get to buy Ocean Spray's products in reusable packaging,
and then return the empty packages when done. The packages will be cleaned,
sanitized, and refilled with the original products for reuse.
In October 2019, Ocean Spray launched an innovation incubator program called Lighthouse.
The program's aim was to create an entrepreneurial attitude inside the
company. Within a year of its launch, the initiative gave birth to five new brands.
The first to launch was Atoka — a line of wellness drinks that include, quote,
"Tea Tonics, Oatmilk Elixirs and Herbal Shots."
Some of the blends include a mix of cranberry, guayusa, ginseng and ginger;
another is a mix of cranberry, linden flower, lemongrass, orange peel and ginger.
Besides Atoka, the incubator program has been successful in thinking of so-called "out-of-bog"
ideas when it comes to using the nutritional value of cranberries other than in juice and sauce.
So they came up with a cranberry-based gummy under a new brand called Dabbly.
These gummies are meant to act like sunscreens, except you simply pop one into your mouth.
The team at Lighthouse also stormed up the idea of a CBD beverage that goes by
the brand name CarryOn, and Tally-Ho — another brand that focuses on the oral
and emotional health of pets. Unfortunately, in December 2020, Tally-Ho closed up shop.
Cranberry bogs make for some unique Instagram-worthy shots. Imagine standing
amidst a shiny red bed of cranberries. The only challenge: finding a bog near you.
Cranberries grow only in select climates, and in select U.S. states such as Massachusetts,
Wisconsin, New Jersey, Oregon, and Washington.
To expose the superfood to more people,
Ocean Spray started a promotional activity. The activity set up mini cranberry bogs
in the middle of busy cities to get city dwellers more curious about the tart berry.
In 2017, the pop-up bog at Rockefeller center had
popular chef Curtis Stone dine with Ocean Spray's growers.
The same year, the cooperative set up a bog in Boston to celebrate the last harvest of the year,
at a Food and Nutrition Conference in Chicago, and at the National Mall in Washington, D.C.
The pop-up bogs had growers demonstrate the process of harvesting cranberries which is
quite unlike the harvesting process for any other crop.
Once the berries are ripe, the farmers flood the bogs with water to make the cranberries
float before using special equipment to remove all the ripe berries from the vines.
This is done by dragging the equipment along the bed of cranberries. This method
is more convenient compared to the time-consuming alternative
that involves farmers plucking each cranberry from the vine.
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