Don Vultaggio leaned over a table and spun a giant lazy Susan until a 22-ounce can of Arnold Palmer appeared before him. It was 2 p.m. and time for Mr. Vultaggio, the founder and chairman of AriZona Iced Tea, to hold his daily two-hour lunch and board meeting in his Southwest-themed office in central Long Island, N.Y.
Behind him was a wall of dozens of bottles and cans from the company’s deep roster of products, and a security monitor showing a live feed of the robot-powered storage and retrieval operations of its largest factory, which is in New Jersey.
It has been from this perch that Mr. Vultaggio has spent the last few weeks contemplating what he’s insisted, for most of his company’s three decades of existence, he would never do: raise the 99-cent price of its canned iced teas, AriZona’s calling card since 1997.
The Trump administration’s 50 percent tariff on aluminum imports may leave him no choice.
If the price of a tallboy of AriZona Iced Tea had kept pace with inflation, the company would today be selling it for $1.99. Instead, the 99-cent price remains so central to the company’s identity that the numbers are displayed on the can boldly and prominently.
AriZona uses more than 100 million pounds of aluminum a year for its cans, and about 20 percent of that comes from Canada. Mr. Vultaggio is hopeful that the tariff dispute will be resolved, but if it is not, he said, “at some point the consumer is going to have to pay the price.”
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