Pepsi Wants You To Put Orange Juice On Your Cereal

One of the biggest breakfast debates of all-time is whether you put your milk in the bowl before or after adding cereal. Beverage brand Tropicana might have a way to one-up that debate.

What Happened: To coincide with National Orange Juice Day on May 4, Tropicana is offering a new cereal called Tropicana Crunch Honey Almond Cereal, which it says is the first cereal made specifically to be eaten with orange juice.

“Orange juice on cereal. Some call it weird. Some call it breakfast,” Tropicana says on its website.

The website says the honey almond clusters are made to be spooned and sipped together. A paper sip straw will be included in the cereal box. 

Tropicana said in an Instagram post that over 15 million people have tried orange juice on cereal.

Boxes of Tropicana Crunch will be given away to celebrate the launch.

Related Link: If You Invested $1,000 In Pepsi When It Bought Gatorade, Here's How Much You'd Have Now 

Why It’s Important: Tropicana is partially owned by PepsiCo Inc PEP through a joint venture. Pepsi announced it would be selling Tropicana, Naked and other juice brands to private equity firm PAI Partners.

The deal gave PepsiCo a 39% ownership in a new joint venture containing the juice brands. Pepsi also kept U.S. distribution rights to the juice brands.

With its ownership of non-beverage brands, Pepsi has been able to experiment with offerings. This includes combining the company’s cereal brands with a promotion for its orange juice, and has also included combining Mountain Dew with Doritos.

This is one area where Pepsi has an advantage over rival Coca-Cola Co KO with the use of cross promotion of food and beverage and strong pricing power in stores with ownership of major brands.

Photo: Courtesy of Tropicana