西瓜能否引領果汁市場新熱潮

Peruse the produce aisle at your local grocery store and you’ll likely find a massive selection of juices featuring blueberries, carrots, strawberries and other familiar fruits and veggies.
But the juicing craze — a growing, multibillion-dollar business — has up until now left one popular fruit behind: the watermelon. Now one Illinois farmer is hoping there’s still some room for the large fruit to make a splash.
The watermelon juice in question is called Tsamma [pronounced sah-mah], and it was conceptualized earlier this year by fresh produce grower Sarah Frey-Talley. After testing a variety of flavor bases at home for a few months, Frey-Talley, the chief executive of Frey Farms, is now bringing Tsamma to major retail shelves.
Frey-Talley believes the watermelon is a perfect fit for the juice aisle, pointing out that the average American usually buys a whole watermelon just five times a year. It can take a lot of time to slice the fruit, remove seeds, and then it has to be consumed quickly—all factors that limit its growth potential.

考察一下商店貨架，你很可能會發現各式各樣的果汁口味可供選擇，包括藍莓、胡蘿蔔、草莓以及其它各種我們所熟悉的水果和蔬菜。
榨汁熱潮一路發展到現在，這個價值數十億美元的市場已引得各路果蔬競折腰，但到目前爲止，有一種很受歡迎的水果仍未得到充分的開發利用，那就是西瓜。現在，美國伊利諾伊州的一名農場主正在期盼，這種大個頭的水果能在榨汁市場上引發轟動。
弗雷-塔利認爲，西瓜非常適合製成果汁進行銷售，她指出，美國人平均一年通常只買五次一整隻的西瓜。把西瓜切片和去籽非常費時，而且必須儘快吃掉——所有這些因素都限制了西瓜的發展潛力。
“我們選擇了美國人喜愛但食用不方便的水果，並且將它加工成瓶裝產品。”

“We took an inconvenient item that Americans like to eat anyway and we put it in a bottle.”
Even though it has been on the market for just three months, Tsamma is already on the shelves in more than 1,200 stores, including Whole Foods and The Fresh Market. Other national chains are expressing interest in the beverage, which squeezes one-and-a-half pounds of watermelon into each bottle.
Tsamma’s quick acceptance from grocery-store chains can be attributed to Frey-Talley’s experience as both a farmer and a savvy saleswoman. When Frey-Talley was as young as eight, she accompanied her mother on a delivery route for the watermelons her family grew on a small, 80-acre farm in southern Illinois.
By the time she was a teenager, Frey-Talley took over the route from her mother, at that point she also began to purchase watermelons and cantaloupes from small farms and distribute them to stores across several states.
Since Frey-Talley took over the family business she has expanded what is now called Frey Farms across seven states, with several thousand acres of land, and distribution centers that package and ship the produce. In the beginning, Frey-Talley worked alone, but now she employees up to 600 workers during the peak-growing season.

上市才短短三個月，Tsamma就已經出現在1,200多家商店的貨架上，其中不乏全食超市（Whole Foods）和生鮮市場（The Fresh Market）這些知名的零售商。其它全國性的連鎖店也紛紛表示出對這款每瓶用1.5磅西瓜榨成的西瓜汁的興趣。
Tsamma能夠迅速獲得食品雜貨連鎖店的認可，農場主弗雷-塔利功不可沒，她在農場的經營上經驗豐富，同時又深諳銷售之道。當她還只有8歲時，就跟着母親，將自家在伊利諾伊州南部一座面積爲80英畝的小型農場裏種出的西瓜送往經銷商處。
到了十幾歲的時候，弗雷-塔利接手了母親的送貨工作。當時她也開始從其他的小型農場裏購買西瓜和甜瓜，然後分銷到美國數州的大小商店中。
接管家族生意後，弗雷-塔利開始拓展業務。如今的弗雷農場已經在7個州擁有數千英畝的土地，還有負責農產品包裝和運輸的分銷中心。農場規模也從最初的弗雷-塔利一人，拓展到現在農忙季節時多達600人的僱傭工。

Tsamma (named after a melon grown in Africa that is thought to be the parent of all melons we know today) is angling for a slice of the bottled super-premium fruit and veggie juices segment, which reported sales of $2.25 billion last year, according to a Barron’s report that cited Beverage Marketing data. Sales for that segment are up 58% since 2004, the research and consulting firm has reported.
Consumers are gravitating toward bottled juices, and even buying more mixers to make juices at home, as they aim to drink more all-natural beverages. That shift has resulted in greater sales of juices, smoothies and flavored waters, but fewer sales of high-sugar beverages like soda.
Sherry Frey (no relation to Frey-Talley), vice president of Nielsen Perishables Group, said the popularity of juices has ebbed and flowed the past few decades, but this time around it is notable that juices aren’t just popular with health-conscious consumers. Juice sales today have across-the-board appeal, Frey said, noting that millennials are looking for something healthy on the go, parents like to serve juices to their kids, and boomers are looking at the benefits of juicing as they look to extend their lives.
Frey-Talley has a fairly aggressive growth plan for Tsamma, hoping annual sales will hit $150 million within five years.
“Some might think that our plan of growth is aggressive, and we definitely have a lot of consumer education to do to get people to understand the benefits,” Frey-Talley said. She believes watermelon juice sales could one day rival the sale of coconut water — another beverage that has become wildly popular in recent years.
“I’m hoping anyway,” she said. “Otherwise I’ll have to sell a farm.”

Tsamma（得名於非洲的一種瓜，這種瓜被認爲是當今所有瓜的親本）的意圖，是在高級瓶裝果蔬汁飲料市場中贏得一席之地。根據《巴倫週刊》（Barron）引用的研究諮詢公司Beverage Marketing的報告數據，去年美國果蔬飲料市場的銷售額高達22.5億美元。這家公司稱，自2004年以來，果蔬飲料市場的銷售已增長了58%。
瓶裝果汁對消費者很有吸引力，甚至有越來越多的消費者開始購買果汁機，在家自制果汁，因爲他們希望喝到更加純天然的飲料。這種消費趨勢的轉變，推動了果汁、冰沙和果味飲料的銷量上升，汽水等高糖飲料的銷量則隨之下降。
尼爾森食品集團（Nielsen Perishables Group）的副總裁謝里o弗雷（與弗雷-塔利沒有親戚關係）表示，果汁的流行在過去幾十年裏起起落落，但如今的發展尤爲值得關注，因爲它不僅受到了關心健康的消費者的喜愛，更具有全方位的吸引力。弗雷分析，千禧一代十分熱衷於尋找健康的飲食，父母們希望讓孩子多喝果汁，而嬰兒潮一代則希望果汁能延長壽命。
弗雷-塔利爲Tsamma制定了雄心勃勃的擴張計劃，希望年銷售額能在5年內衝到1.5億美元。
“也許有人認爲我們的發展計劃過於激進。而我們確實還有大量的消費者教育工作要做，好讓大家瞭解我們的產品優勢，”弗雷-塔利表示。她相信，西瓜汁的銷售有一天必能與椰子汁比肩——這也是近年來十分流行的一款飲品。
“當然，這只是我的希望，”她承認，“如果最終達不到預期，我就只好賣掉一座農場了。”