Originally published at: The enduring economics of the 99-cent Arizona Iced Tea can | Boing Boing
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The short spoiler answer: the family-owned company has made a conscious choice to not be greedy assholes, and keep their customers loyal and happy instead.
Contrary to MBA training, they’re capable of looking beyond the next quarter’s numbers into the long term. As a result, the goodwill is extremely strong with this brand.
That’s especially true for anyone who’s gone through a rough financial patch and found themselves gouged on every other product except for this beverage. If super sugary soft drinks are their thing, they’ll keep coming back to it when times aren’t so tight.
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I think the “family owned company” phrase says it all. Every time I come across a company I admire, seems to be treating even its lowliest employee fairly, it turns out to be a privately held family company. As soon as you go public, no amount of profit is ever enough. It must always be increasing.
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Good for Arizona and if you drink sugar bombs like this at least support a halfway decent company. But damn, their regular Ice Tea With Lemon can has 75g of sugar (if you drink the whole can, and who wouldn’t?). 75g is more than 1/3 cup of granulated sugar. Do they make an un-sweet version? I think the Green Tea might have less sugar.
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Soft drinks in general seem to be pretty resilient price-wise. It doesn’t hurt that they’re 90+% water and a lot of these companies (not Arizona afaik), have corrupted municipalities to get sweetheart deals or outright perpetual usage rights to the groundwater making it essentially free.
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Coke did it first, and as usual, Planet Money has the story. Given how many BB stories they cover (I seem to spend half my time posting their links here 
), I guess all mutants should listen to that podcast. Clearly a lot of interest overlap.
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Too bad whomever tweeted that from the company missed the point of Dark Souls. Yhorm The Giant is defeated by the main character 
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The company may be reducing profits… but in the past few years they’ve increased the wholesale price for stores (which may be from the distributor, in the Denver area it’s PepsiCo)
Some places have quit carrying the tea because the margin is so slight
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Granted, there’s always exceptions to that rule- Hobby lobby is one of them. I refuse to do business with them based on their stance regarding health care for their employees, and oh yeah, that thing with the antiquities.
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This is my go-to; the lite Arnold Palmer. Only… 39 grams of sugar? With Sucralose also? What? lol
Eh a once in a while treat
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For a while I couldn’t be sure which of these made me hate them more. Happily, it’s not a zero-sum game.
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A can of Arizona is less than 99 cents in Tijuana.
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$1.29 in gas stations around here (or 2 for $2.25). They have specially printed cans that don’t say 99 cents and have the station logo near the top.
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