Odwalla

by Odwalla

1980 – 2020 IT CAME BACK

Back, under an entirely new flag. Coca-Cola, which paid $181 million for Odwalla in 2001, halted production in July 2020 and sold the brand to an investment firm. Mexico's Grupo Jumex relaunched the juices and smoothies in the US in 2025, and they reached Walmart shelves in spring 2026.

Three friends with a secondhand juicer started squeezing oranges in a Santa Cruz shed in 1980 and delivered the results to restaurants out of a Volkswagen van. Forty years later it was the biggest name in the refrigerated case, and Coca-Cola switched it off.

🧾 One more thingIn 1996 a batch of unpasteurized Odwalla apple juice carried E. coli O157:H7 to roughly seventy people across three states and British Columbia, and a 16-month-old girl died. The company pleaded guilty to selling adulterated food and paid $1.5 million, then the largest criminal fine in an FDA food-injury case; the warning label on every unpasteurized juice sold in America descends from it.

Filed under: Drinks & Sodas · the ’80s

🎲 Remember another one 🛒 Test your memory

🕯️ Shoppers also mourned