The key event in the early years of the company came in 1954. In 1953 the company moved to larger quarters, the former Florida Grapefruit Canning Plant in Bradenton, which served as the firm's headquarters into the late 1990s. The character provided an instantly recognizable symbol for the still-young company and helped establish it in the consumer market as Tropicana products began appearing in supermarket cases, mainly in the Northeast and Southeast. Personified brands, such as Speedy Alka Seltzer, were popular in the early television days of the 1950s, and Rossi joined the trend in 1951 when he commissioned the creation of "Tropic-Ana," a grass skirt- and lei-wearing, pigtailed girl balancing a large bowl of oranges on her head. In addition, he registered "Tropicana" as a trademark and began using it on his fruit section and juice products, which proved so successful that he abandoned the marketing of the fruit gift boxes. That same year Rossi also entered the burgeoning market for frozen orange juice concentrate, purchasing an evaporator to extract the water from the juice. In 1949 the company moved to Bradenton and changed its name to Fruit Industries, Inc.
He decided to squeeze the smaller oranges into juice, and ship it to the Northeast along with jars of fresh fruit sections, using specially modified refrigerated trucks. But since only the largest fruit was selected for the boxes and the sections, Rossi needed to find a way to use the smaller fruit that was going to waste. He next expanded into selling jars of chilled fruit sections. Rossi's gift boxes grew even more popular, and were soon being distributed across the country.
Rossi was now able to buy his citrus directly from nearby growers rather than from retail supermarkets in Miami, cutting his costs and improving his product's freshness. Finding surprising success in this business, he moved in 1947 to Palmetto, a town just north of Bradenton, where he purchased the Overstreet Packing Company, renaming it the Manatee River Packing Company. The same week he sold his restaurant, Rossi embarked on a new venture, that of selling gift boxes of Florida citrus fruit to such department stores as Macy's and Gimbel's in New York City. Wartime gasoline rationing, however, crippled the Florida tourism industry, leading Rossi to exit the restaurant business. Dreaming of owning a chain of restaurants, he bought the Terrace restaurant in Miami Beach in 1944. He grew tomatoes on a 50-acre rented farm there, and also bought a cafeteria in downtown Bradenton, where his freshly prepared food proved popular. In the early 1940s, longing to live in a climate similar to his native Sicily, Rossi-after first relocating in Virginia where he was a farmer-moved to Florida, settling in Bradenton, a small gulf coast town in Manatee County south of Tampa. After working in a machine shop, and as a cabdriver and chauffeur, in the late 1920s he purchased the first self-service grocery store in the country, the Aurora Farms market on Long Island, which he ran for 13 years. But Rossi found that he liked the United States and its money-making opportunities too much to leave, and the African expedition was quickly forgotten. He and four other friends came to the big city to make enough money to finance an adventure in Africa, where they planned to make a film. Sailing from Naples, Italy, he landed in New York City with $30 in his pocket. Rossi, who was born in Messina, Sicily, in 1900, and had immigrated to the United States in 1921.
Internationally, Tropicana distributes its products in 23 countries, with the primary brands including Tropicana Pure Premium, Dole juices, Fruvita, Hitchcock, Looza, and Copella. In North America, the company's main brands are Tropicana Pure Premium, Tropicana Season's Best, Dole juices, and Tropicana Twister. The company was a pioneer in the not-from-concentrate, chilled orange juice sector, and accounts for more than 70 percent of U.S. chilled juice sector, Tropicana holds a commanding 39.8 percent share.
orange juice market, with a share of 33 percent, compared to archrival The Minute Maid Company's 24 percent (Ironically, Minute Maid is owned by PepsiCo, Inc.'s archrival The Coca-Cola Company). It also claims the top spot in the overall U.S. is the leading producer of chilled orange juice in the world.
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