As seen in CNN Business.ย
Imagine you have $400 to spend on a luxury dining experience. You might treat yourself to a tin of premium caviar, a bottle or two of very fine wine or a multi-course meal at a high-end restaurant.
Or you could blow it all on a single pineapple.
The Rubyglow pineapple โโ bred for its distinctive red exterior and its sweetness โ costs $395.99 at Melissaโs Produce, a California-based seller of specialty fruit and veggies. It took Del Monte, a wholesaler which sells a variety of produce but specializes in pineapple, a decade and a half to develop the red-hued fruit. A limited crop was first available in China early this year. Recently, Del Monte decided to see how the item would fare in the United States, and Melissaโs starting selling it at the astronomical price.
It may not seem like the best time to market a (very, very) expensive piece of fruit in America. It wasnโt that long ago thatย soaring grocery pricesย made headline news, stressing out consumers and stretching their budgetsthin. Still nervous about inflation andย worried about unemployment, manyย Americans are now spending less.
And yet, thereโs interest in premium fruit โ enough to convince Del Monte to bring the Rubyglow, which is grown in Costa Rica, stateside.
โConsumers are willing to pay for something thatโs special,โ said Cindy van Rijswick, fresh produce strategist for Rabobankโs global research team.When it comes to specialty produce, โthereโs always a small market for higher-end restaurants, or foodies, or certain online channels,โ she said.
Americans have become interested in particular for new fruit varieties in recent years, paying a premium for Honeycrisp apples, Cotton Candy grapes, Sumo Citrus and vertically-grown Japanese strawberries. Now, they are hungry for different types of fruit, and are ready to shell out for exciting new options.
But a $400 pineapple? Thatโs a bit rich.
The rise of premium fruit
When the Honeycrisp was introduced over 30 years ago, there werenโt many apple options in the supermarket.
Red Delicious, Golden Delicious and, in some areas, McIntosh apples were standard fare, recalled Jim Luby, a professor in the horticultural science department at the University of Minnesota. But that was about it. โIf you didnโt go out to a local orchard, you didnโt have that many choices.โ
People were hungry for more, and Honeycrisp fit the bill โย sweet, crisp and novel.
โIt became popular in Minnesota amongst our growers,โ said Luby, who was part of the team that developed the variety.โThere wasnโt that much production. So it was priced high. And yet it kept selling.โ
Marketing new produce is a costly affair. Researchers have to breed and cross-breed, wait out the growing cycle, and start over if the fruit disappoints. Finding something that is both delicious and resilient enough to be commercially successful takes time, and a lot of painstaking work. Then plant scientists have to convince growers to make an investment in an unproven fruit, devoting resources that could be used for old favorites.
But the Honeycrisp helped show that the risk can be justified.
Since the appleโs success, variety in the produce section has increased. Over roughly the past decade, per capita availability โย a good proxy for consumption โ of higher-priced fruit, like berries, mango and avocados, has increased, according to Rabobank, which drew from USDA data. In that time, availability of cheaper fruit like apples and bananas has essentially stayed flat.
Some specialty fruits have even developed cult followings: those Cotton Candy grapes, named for their sweetness, hit the scene in 2011 and quickly became popular. Sumo Citrus, a hybrid of navel oranges, pomelos and mandarins, was more of a slow burn,ย but has exploded in recent years.
In these cases, consumers have been willing to spend a little bit more. But those items are cheap in comparison to Oishiiโs specialty strawberries, grown indoors in a climate-controlled vertical farm. When its berries first became available to the public in 2018, Oishii charged $50 for a pack of eight.
Oishii is selling more than just berries: Itโs selling a luxury item. The berries are packed in flat boxes that spotlight each individual fruit, more like a package for hand-crafted chocolate truffles than the mold-hiding plastic containers you see at a supermarket. Each fruit is supposed to be perfect.
โEven at $50, we had thousands of people on the waitlist constantly,โ said Oishii CEO Hiroki Koga.
Buzzy or not, $50 for strawberries is not a sustainable price. Today, after rounds of funding and improved technology, Oishiiโs products are more readily available, and much cheaper. You can get Oishii berries at mainstream grocers for around $10-$14 per pack.
Del Monte makes its move
Del Monteโs researchers have been coming up with different types of pineapples for years, designing proprietary fruit and often optimizing for taste. In 2020ย the companyย launched its own pretty, giftable fruit โย the Pinkglow pineapple, which has pink flesh and comes in its own special box.
The Pinkglow was never supposed to be a grocery list staple, said Melissa Mackay, VP of marketing in North Americaย at Del Monte. โItโs a hostess gift, itโs a Motherโs Day gift,โ she said. Itโs also perfect for Instagram and TikTok, where food influencers with large followings cut open the fruit, marveled at its color and shared their reviews (the verdict: very sweet).
At first, the Pinkglow was sold for about $50. Today, you can get one for far less, online between around $8 and $29 โ bargain prices, relatively, but still steep for a pineapple.
If you can afford it, splurging on a pink pineapple is โpermissible, because youโre investing in something thatโs good for you,โ saidย Melanie Zanoza Bartelme, associate director of Mintel Food & Drink. โItโs like people who go to Erewhon and spend almost $20 on a smoothie that a celebrity created,โ she said, referring to the high-end Los Angeles grocery store known for collaborating with celebrities on pricey smoothies (like Hailey Bieberโs Strawberry Glaze Skin Smoothie, priced at $19 for a 20-ounce cup).
Still, she noted, there is a โblank space between a $16 pineapple and a $400 pineapple.โ
Is it worth it?
Melissaโs Produce, which sells everything from truffles to mangosteens to kumquats, describes the Rubyglow on its website as a โrare gemโ and โthe pinnacle of luxury fruit,โ adding that โfor the gourmand, itโs an unforgettable gift.โ
The pitch has had limited success. Melissaโs started with 50 pineapples, according to Robert Schueller, director of public relations at Melissaโs Produce. So far, it has sold about half that number over the course of a month, including to restaurants in Las Vegas and Southern California, which he said are using the fruit in displays.
โThereโs a market for this,โ Schueller said. Itโs just a very small, very niche market. โThis is not something for everybody.โ
To try to create more buzz, Melissaโs reached out to a handful of food influencers, including Bo Corley, a chef who shares recipes and other food tidbits on his social channels.
The pineapple โwas absolutely delightful,โ Corley said. โThereโs almost like a bitter aftertaste when you eat too much pineapple,โ he explained. โYou donโt have that with the Rubyglow.โ
But, he said, it wasnโt worth $400.
Corley can see people spending to get their hands on the Rubyglow, if not for the taste of the pineapple itself then for the wow factor of the brilliant exterior.
โI think charcuterie boards this Christmas, Thanksgiving โย youโre going to see this Rubyglow as a centerpiece, especially in an affluent house,โ he said. In other words, people may not spend for the taste of the pineapple, but justย to show off that they have it.
