Imagine you have $400 to spend on a luxury dining experience. You can indulge in a can of premium caviar, a bottle or two of very fine wine, or a multi-course meal at an upscale restaurant.
Or you can spend it all on a single pineapple.
The Rubyglow Pineapple – created for its distinctive red exterior and sweetness – costs $395.99 at Melissa's Produce, a California-based seller of specialty fruits and vegetables.
Del Monte, a wholesaler that sells a variety of products but specializes in pineapple, took a decade and a half to develop the red-colored fruit.
A limited harvest was first made available in China earlier this year. Recently, Del Monte decided to see how the item would do in the United States and Melissa began selling it for an astronomical price.
It might not seem like the best time to market a (very) expensive fruit in America. It wasn't long ago that rising food prices made headlines, stressing consumers and stretching their budgets.
Still nervous about inflation and worried about unemployment, many Americans are now spending less.
Still, there's interest in premium fruit — enough to convince Del Monte to bring Rubyglow, which is grown in Costa Rica, to the United States.
“Consumers are willing to pay for something that is special,” said Cindy van Rijswick, fresh produce strategist in Rabobank’s global research team. When it comes to specialty products, “there's always a small market for high-end restaurants, or gourmet restaurants, or certain online channels,” she said.
In recent years, Americans have become particularly interested in new fruit varieties, paying a premium for Honeycrisp apples, Cotton Candy grapes, Sumo Citrus and vertically grown Japanese strawberries.
Now, they are hungry for different types of fruits and are ready to buy new interesting options.
But a $400 pineapple? This is a little expensive.
The rise of premium fruit
When Honeycrisp was introduced more than 30 years ago, there weren't many apple options in the supermarket.
Red Delicious, Golden Delicious and, in some areas, McIntosh apples were standard foods, recalled Jim Luby, professor in the horticultural sciences department at the University of Minnesota. But that was all. “If you didn’t go to a local orchard, you wouldn’t have as many options.”
People were hungry for more, and Honeycrisp fit the bill – sweet, crunchy and innovative.
“It has become popular in Minnesota among our growers,” said Luby, who was part of the team that developed the variety. “There wasn’t that much production. So the price was high. And yet it continued to sell.
Marketing new products is an expensive affair. Researchers must breed and crossbreed, wait out the growth cycle, and start over if the fruit disappoints. Finding something that is both delicious and sturdy enough to be commercially successful takes time and a lot of hard work.
Then, plant scientists will have to convince producers to invest in an unproven fruit, dedicating resources that could be used on old favorites.
But Honeycrisp helped show that the risk can be justified.
Since the apple's success, the variety in the produce section has increased. Over the past decade, the per capita availability – a good indicator of consumption – of more expensive fruits such as berries, mangos and avocados has increased, according to Rabobank, which relied on USDA data.
During this period, the availability of cheaper fruits such as apples and bananas remained essentially stable.
Some specialty fruits have even developed a cult following: those Algodão Doce grapes, named for their sweetness, hit the scene in 2011 and quickly became popular. Sumo Citrus, a hybrid of navel oranges, pomelos and tangerines, was a slower burn but has exploded in recent years.
In these cases, consumers are willing to spend a little more. But these items are cheap compared to Oishii's specialty strawberries, grown indoors in a climate-controlled vertical farm.
When its fruits were first made available to the public in 2018, Oishii charged $50 for a pack of eight.
Oishii is selling more than just berries: it's selling a luxury item.
The fruits are packaged in flat boxes that highlight each individual fruit, more like packaging for artisanal chocolate truffles than the mold-hiding plastic containers you see in a supermarket. Each fruit must be perfect.
“Even though it cost $50, we had thousands of people on the waiting list constantly,” said Oishii CEO Hiroki Koga.
Buzzy or not, $50 [cerca de R$ 255] for strawberries is not a sustainable price. Today, after rounds of funding and improved technology, Oishii products are more readily available and much cheaper.
You can buy Oishii fruit in traditional grocery stores for around US$10 (about R$50) to US$14 (about R$70) per package.
Del Monte makes his move
Del Monte researchers have been breeding different types of pineapple for years, designing unique fruits and often optimizing the flavor. In 2020, the company launched its own beautiful, giftable fruit – the Pinkglow pineapple, which has pink flesh and comes in a special box.
Pinkglow should never be a staple on the shopping list, said Melissa Mackay, vice president of North American marketing for Del Monte. “It’s a hostess gift, it’s a Mother’s Day gift,” she said.
It's also perfect for Instagram and TikTok, where food influencers with large followings open the fruit, marvel at its color, and share their reviews (the verdict: very sweet).
At first, Pinkglow sold for about $50. Today, you can get one for much less online, for between about $8 and $29 — relatively cheap prices, but still high for a pineapple.
If you can afford it, splurging on a pink pineapple is “allowable, because you're investing in something that's good for you,” said Melanie Zanoza Bartelme, associate director at Mintel Food & Drink.
“It's like people go to Erewhon and spend almost $20 on a smoothie created by a celebrity,” she said, referring to the high-end Los Angeles supermarket known for collaborating with celebrities on pricey smoothies (like the Strawberry Glaze Skin Hailey Bieber Smoothie), priced at US$19 for a 560-gram cup).
Still, she noted, there is “a white space between a $16 pineapple and a $400 pineapple.”
It is worth it?
Melissa's Produce, which sells everything from truffles to mangosteens and kumquats, describes Rubyglow on its website as a “rare gem” and “the pinnacle of luxurious fruit,” adding that “for the gourmand, it's an unforgettable gift.”
The field had limited success. Melissa's started with 50 pineapples, according to Robert Schueller, director of public relations for Melissa's Produce. So far, he has sold about half that number over the course of a month, including to restaurants in Las Vegas and Southern California, which he says use the fruit in displays.
“There’s a market for this,” Schueller said. It's just a very small, niche market. “This is not something for everyone.”
To try to create more buzz, Melissa's reached out to several food influencers, including Bo Corley, a chef who shares recipes and other food facts on his social channels.
The pineapple “was absolutely delicious,” Corley said. “There's almost a bitter taste when you eat a lot of pineapple,” he explained. “You don’t get that with Rubyglow.”
But, he said, it wasn't worth $400.
Corley can see people spending to get their hands on Rubyglow, if not for the pineapple flavor itself, then at least for the wow factor of the shiny exterior.
“I think charcuterie boards this Christmas, Thanksgiving — you'll see this Rubyglow as a centerpiece, especially in a wealthy home,” he said. In other words, people may not spend money to taste pineapple, but just to show that they have it.
Source: CNN Brasil
Bruce Belcher is a seasoned author with over 5 years of experience in world news. He writes for online news websites and provides in-depth analysis on the world stock market. Bruce is known for his insightful perspectives and commitment to keeping the public informed.
