Minute Maid helped make orange juice a year-round morning staple in 1946, when it started shipping cans of frozen juice around the U.S.
But 80 years later, the brand's parent company is halting sales of frozen juice concentrates in the U.S. and Canada, saying it wants to focus on the fresh juices that customers now prefer.
“We are discontinuing our frozen products and exiting the frozen can category in response to shifting consumer preferences,” The Coca-Cola Co., which owns Minute Maid, said Wednesday in a statement.
Minute Maid’s frozen juices – including several varieties of orange juice, lemonade and limeade – will be discontinued by April, with inventory available while supplies last, Coca-Cola said.
For generations, Americans who wanted orange juice without the work of squeezing fresh fruit cracked open a can and watched a cylinder of frozen juice go ker-plunk into a pitcher. The concentrated juice was mixed with water to make it ready for drinking.
In 1946, Vacuum Foods Corp. became the first U.S. company to ship frozen orange juice across the country, according to Coca-Cola. It named the product Minute Maid; Vacuum Foods eventually changed its name to Minute Maid as well. Rival Tropicana, which still sells frozen canned juice, was founded in 1947.
Coca-Cola acquired Minute Maid in 1960, and 13 years later, Minute Maid introduced ready-to-drink orange juice, which was sold in the refrigerated case instead of the freezer and let consumers skip the step of mixing it up. Minute Maid added lemonade and fruit punch to its lineup in 1980.
In recent years, orange juice has struggled as other options, like energy drinks and protein smoothies, have flooded the market. Skyrocketing prices due to poor weather conditions in Brazil and Florida haven’t helped; a 12-ounce can of frozen orange juice cost an average of $4.82 in December, up 13% from the prior year, according to U.S. government data.
Consumers also increasingly questioned the added sugar in juices. Minute Maid launched Zero Sugar versions of its fresh juices in 2020. But its frozen juices have languished along with the broader frozen juice category.
U.S. sales of frozen beverages fell nearly 8% in the 52 weeks ending Jan. 24, according to the market research firm NielsenIQ.
Minute Maid frozen concentrate orange juice is on display at a grocery store in White Plains, N.Y. on Wednesday, Feb. 4, 2026. (AP Photo/Donald King)
ATLANTA (AP) — The Georgia General Assembly ended its annual session early Friday without a plan for new equipment to overhaul the state's voting system by a July deadline, plunging into doubt the future of elections in the political battleground.
The lawmakers' failure to offer a solution after months of debate raises uncertainty about how Georgians will vote in November and leaves confusion that could end in the courts or a special legislative session.
“They’ve abdicated their responsibility,” Democratic state Rep. Saira Draper said of inaction by Republicans who control the legislature.
Currently, voters make their choices on Dominion Voting machines, which then print ballots with a QR code that scanners read to tally votes. Those machines have been repeatedly targeted by President Donald Trump following his 2020 election loss, and Trump’s Georgia supporters responded by enacting a law in 2024 that bans using barcodes to count votes.
But state law still requires counties to use the machines. No money has been allocated to reprogram them, and lawmakers failed to agree on a replacement.
“We’ll have an unresolvable statutory conflict come July 1,” said House Governmental Affairs Committee Chairman Victor Anderson, a Cornelia Republican who backed a proposal to keep using the machines in 2026 that Senate Republicans declined to consider.
Republican House Speaker Jon Burns said he would meet with Gov. Brian Kemp and “take his temperature” on the possibility of a special session.
Kemp spokesperson Carter Chapman said he Republican governor will examine the situation.
“We’ll analyze all bills, as well as the consequence of those that did not pass,” Chapman said Friday.
House Republicans and Democrats backed Anderson's plan, which would have required that Georgia choose a voting process that didn't use QR codes by 2028. Election officials preferred that solution.
“The Senate has shown that they’re not responsible actors,” Draper said. She added that Lt. Gov. Burt Jones, a Trump-endorsed Republican running for governor, seemed more interested in keeping Trump's backing than “doing right by Georgia voters.”
A spokesperson for Jones didn't immediately respond to a request for comment early Friday.
Joseph Kirk, Bartow County election supervisor and president of the Georgia Association of Voter Registration and Election Officials, said he’ll look to the secretary of state for guidance and assumes a judge will rule to instruct election officials how to proceed.
“This is uncharted territory,” he said.
Robert Sinners, a spokesperson for Republican Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger, who is also running for governor, said officials are “ready to follow the law and follow the Constitution.”
Burns told reporters that his chamber was seeking to minimize changes this year.
“You can’t change horses in the middle of the stream,” Burns said.
Anderson said without action, the state could be required to use hand-marked and hand-counted paper ballots in November.
Election officials say switching to a new system within just a few months, as advocated by some Republicans, would be nearly impossible.
“They made no way for this to happen except putting a deadline on it," Cherokee County elections director Anne Dover said of the switch away from barcodes. Dover said one problem under some plans is that a very large number of ballots would have to be printed.
Lawmakers seemed more concerned about scoring political points than making practical plans, Paulding County Election Supervisor Deidre Holden said.
“If anyone is resilient and can get the job done, it’s all of us election officials, but the legislators need to work with us, and they need to understand what we do before they go making laws that are basically unachievable for us,” Holden said.
Supporters of hand-marked paper ballots say voters are more likely to trust in an accurate count if they can see what gets read by the scanner.
Right-wing election activists lobbied lawmakers for an immediate switch to hand-marked paper ballots, but the House turned away from a Senate proposal to do so.
Anderson said he wasn’t sure if a special session could escape those political crosswinds, but said Georgia lawmakers must fix the problem.
“This is a legislative problem,” Anderson said. “It’s a legislative solution that has to happen.”
FILE - Voting machines are seen at the Bartow County Election office, Jan. 25, 2024, in Cartersville, Ga. (AP Photo/Mike Stewart, File)
