It happens late in the season. A woman with long, salt-and-pepper hair stands in line at the Trader Joe’s on 72nd Street in Manhattan, evangelizing to her fellow shoppers about the magic of Sumo oranges. We can’t hear what she is saying, but whatever it is, it’s effective. The camera pans: half the line has added Sumos to their carts.
When she posted a video of the 16 March moment to TikTok, Elizabeth Venter, a 28-year-old clothing designer, never expected to spark a Sumo conversation. But 7.7m views later, Venter’s video has precipitated a watershed moment for citrus on the internet. TikToks of first-time Sumo buyers specifically citing the influence of the anonymous New Yorker abound, with new converts reporting back from Florida and Virginia to California and beyond.
“There are so many other videos [with people saying], ‘Now I’m going to buy Sumo oranges because the woman at the 72nd Street Trader Joe’s convinced me!’” says Venter. TikTok may be a hotbed of weird food trends, but “I’ve never seen it specifically with a fruit before,” she adds.
There are a number of reasons the clip works: because of the music it was paired with (Hello, Hello, Elton John featuring Lady Gaga); because Trader Joe’s is social media catnip; because it was a perfect only-in-New-York moment.
But also: the oranges themselves.
Venter did not include audio in her clip, out of respect (“I don’t know her!”), but she walks me through the evangelist’s key talking points: Sumos are easy to peel, extremely juicy very large and extremely in-demand. “She said the first time she had them was at Whole Foods, and people were grabbing them off the shelves like they were free alcohol,” Venter says.
The Sumo moment has been a long time coming. Shiranui, as the fruit is called, are a Japanese invention, an extraordinarily sweet hybrid of mandarin and orange, explains David Karp, a citrus researcher with the University of California, Riverside and noted “fruit detective”. In Japan, they have been marketed since the late 90s under the trade name Dekopon – “pon” for ponkan, and “deko” meaning “bump”, in reference to the fruit’s distinctive shape – but didn’t make their US debut until 2011, when Suntreat Growers & Shippers started marketing the fruit as Sumo Citrus.
In the last few years they have become even more widely available, now under the mantel of AC Brands. Other Shiranui growers have entered the market – Trinity Fruit Company calls them Big Honey, for example – but Sumo has become the default name for the bumpy orange with the top knot in the US.
“The loved child,” Karp informs me, “has many names, and that’s never been more true than with Shiranui.”
They are spectacular, seedless, gargantuan, startlingly sweet. Where a satsuma might be a 12 on the Brix sweetness scale, a Shiranui can be up to 18. But sweetness alone is not enough.
“You judge a Mozart symphony by how loudly it’s played?” asks Karp. “No. You want balance. And Shiranui, when properly picked and shipped, has real good acidity to it.”
For a fruit to become a sensation, a few things need to happen: it needs to be delicious, obviously. But it also needs to grow well and abundantly. It has to stand up to shipping and to storage. And it needs financial backing. “You need to have the money to get it into orbit, basically,” says Karp. “If something is delicious enough, it might take off on its own,” but probably, you’re going to need “some marketing muscle behind that”.
AC Brands gave Sumos that push. “Meet Your New Healthy Obsession,” read a full-page advert in the New Yorker for the giant, dimpled fruit. Sumos have also wrangled premier placement in grocery aisles across the country as well as in-store promotion and billboards. The fruit is “a little weird” but “enormously delicious”, the fruit’s television ads declare – a sentiment echoed by an army of paid influencers, who, all across the internet, are singing the praises of the fruit.
It isn’t totally unheard of for a single fruit to get this kind of backing – Halos, a branded mandarin, had a robust TV ad campaign – but, Karp observes, “it’s quite rare.”
“They promote their fruit the way Doritos promotes Doritos,” says Angela Scarfia, an exotic and specialty produce marketer who’s built an Instagram following hyping less familiar fruits. She started noticing Sumos in the grocery store three or four years ago, she tells me – how could she not? “They brand the heck out of their company. And they make sure you see their products.” Late last year, she officially signed on to start producing Sumo content for this season.
Karp says “the whole social media thing makes me want to vomit”, but even he admits that Sumos have certain advantages that make it unusually well-suited for these times. With their dimpled skins and unmistakable bumps, they are instantly recognizable – a true character orange. “They’ve got this sort of scraggly look about them,” Karp agrees, approvingly. “And I think they came up with a great name.” Even their intense seasonality is arguably an asset. Sumos are generally available from January until April, and what is produce, really, if not the ultimate limited-edition drop?
Viral moments fade, and seasons end, but Venter, for her part, remains a committed Sumo fan. “I think they’re worth the hype,” she laughs. “A lot of people were saying, ‘Oh, Cara Cara oranges are better. I disagree … It’s the best orange I’ve ever had.”
