Last year, 53 new food and drink products containing the Brazilian berries with the funny name were introduced in the United States. Total sales of all things açai surged to 4 million — more than double the 2007 figure, according to the market analysis firm Spins. Not surprisingly, some of the beverage world's big players took notice: Pepsi-owned Naked Juice also sells açai blends, and Jamba Juice offers an açai concoction. But by far the top purveyor of the newest darling of the superfruit juice market is Sambazon, a company co-founded by Ryan Black.
Around the end of 1999, Black traveled to Brazil with his girlfriend and buddy Ed Nichols to celebrate the new millennium. The three were there to surf, but they also took some time to bum around and sample the local culture. That's when Black happened upon açai — and the long lines of people waiting to buy it.
"There was one little açai bar where we went every day for açai bowls," he recalls, "and I was, like, 'How many of these do you sell a day?' And the guy's, like, 'I don't know, 300?' "
The berry was purple. Black saw green.
Within a decade, açai was a star and Sambazon's annual sales had grown to a reported million. Together, Ryan, his brother, Jeremy, and Nichols went from maneuvering açai into small juice bars in Southern California to claiming shelf space in 15,000 stores nationwide, including health-food behemoth Whole Foods. In the process they helped launch a phenomenon rivaling POM Wonderful, the pomegranate potion that became a sensation on the strength of claims that its arsenal of antioxidants was more powerful than that of blueberry juice and red wine. Sambazon, it turned out, could make a similar claim, and more: Its açai juice also contained omega-3 fatty acids, fiber, and even some protein.
In some ways, the whole thing seemed like a fluke, a stroke of luck borne of a surfer dude's chance trip and a berry that happened to be an honest-to-God health marvel.
In truth, what we're guzzling by the gallon is masterful marketing. Rather than being a "global wonderberry," açai might better be described as an overhyped jungle juice that's no better for your health than the average orange. Instead of the happy tale of the little berry that could, the açai phenomenon is really just the latest example of how time and time again we turn off our brains and open our wallets when we're presented with a bottle of exotic "superfruit" juice that's been packaged as some kind of shortcut to immortality.
In other words, we've been had.