About ‘Minute Maid’
‘Minute Maid’ has over sixty years experience in making delicious, nutritious juices and juice drinks from fresh fruit.
In the beginning...
In the 1940’s the U.S. Government wanted to provide its troops with nutritious food, like orange juice for example. Millions of litres of juice weren’t easy to transport, so experiments were done to see if it could be concentrated.
Previous attempts to boil water out of the juice had also boiled out the flavour. So the scientists created a concentrated powder that could be reconstituted into flavourful orange juice.
A company is born
These same people founded a company in Boston, a city whose history included the famous Minutemen. ‘Minute Maid’ seemed like the perfect name for the juice as it was ready in just a minute. The company also developed a new frozen concentrate for an even tastier juice.
The first shipment took place on April 15, 1946. With little money for advertising, the managing director went door to door offering free samples from his ice-filled car boot. His initiative paid off and demand soon became so great that stores found it difficult to keep their freezers stocked!
From a town to a nation
Bing Crosby helped spread the word throughout America to make ‘Minute Maid’ into one of its best-loved orange juices. His radio show "Brought to you by ‘Minute Maid’" was broadcast five times a week from 1948 (Bing also bought 20,000 shares in the company before his show began – a very wise investment) and the collaboration continued for the next thirty years.
Joining forces with The Coca-Cola Company
In 1960, ‘Minute Maid’ was acquired by The Coca-Cola Company who introduced ready-to-drink chilled juice in 1973 and in 1996 ‘Minute Maid’ Premium, 100% Pure Squeezed Juice.
Choosing a place to grow
Only the most delicious oranges make the most delicious juices. ‘Minute Maid’ has focused on two sunny places in the world with the perfect soil and climate: Florida and Sao Paulo. By having plantations in the northern and southern hemispheres there are always ‘Minute Maid’ oranges somewhere in the world maturing to perfection.
From orange, to orange juice
‘Minute Maid’ has dedicated its expertise and know-how to bringing the highest-quality, greatest-tasting juices to fruit-lovers everywhere, continually developing and improving the way it extracts juice. Many of the important fruit components are located in the peel and pulp. The ‘Minute Maid’ Deep-Squeeze method ensures all the goodness of the orange ends up in your glass and captures the best of what fruits have to offer. Plus, from tree to bottle, we make a point of keeping the juice at the right temperature to ensure that our juices reach you in optimum condition.
So you can see, we’ve been working long and hard to make keeping well deliciously simple!