Minute Maid Plymouth R&D Center, Florida

Minute Maid, a subsidiary of Coca-Cola and the world’s largest marketer of fruit juices and drink, got its start in Plymouth, Florida, in the 1940s. A federally funded research project developed the process to produce a palatable frozen orange juice, built a plant in Plymouth, Florida, and then transferred the technology to the Vacuum Foods company, renamed Minute Maid in 1950. The canned frozen concentrate was too late to help win the war (the scientists’ original goal), but it is credited with saving the Florida citrus industry, as well as leading to a steep climb in orange juice consumption nationally, which doubled from eight pounds per person in 1950 to twenty pounds per person in 1960. Minute Maid’s headquarters moved to Houston in 1968, but its national research and development center is still based at the company’s original site, on Orange Avenue, in Plymouth.