Stephano earned a living in the soda business first, until he and his brother realized that the farm had the perfect climate conditions for growing apples. When John’s great-great-grandfather, Stephano Martinelli, emigrated from Switzerland to California in the late 1850s, he moved into his brother Luigi’s farm in Watsonville. “I had a copy machine across the street, so I could run over and bring the print music over and make better copies.”Īpple juice and sparkling apple cider made Martinelli’s a household name, but it certainly didn’t start that way. “I was in the band at the time, and they used to make these really crappy mimeographed prints that nobody could read,” Martinelli said. Other times he’d rush over to the company office and reprint sheet music for the school band. He’d often walk over for lunch with a friend and climb up a pile of apple bins to eat on. When he was a high school student, he says the Martinelli’s plant built during the mid-1880s in Watsonville was just across the street. Martinelli is the fourth-generation family operator of a company best known for sparkling apple cider that’s often featured at holiday parties. Original caption: Elvizio “Shorty” Toroni began working for Martinelli’s in 1911 and was a devoted employee at the company for over 60 years. Finances had also taken a hit, until the viral TikTok videos of 2020 set sales on “fire.” And since the video clips, it’s been hard to keep up with demand, according to Martinelli. The company pulled back on its marketing and advertising during those years, though it still reintroduced hard cider during its 150th anniversary in 2018 (more on that later). And we lost some visibility for a while.” “It’s sort of like building your house while you’re living in it, so that caused so much stress on our organization. “We installed a new computer system that just about took us to our knees,” Martinelli said. From 2018 to 2019, the apple cider company underwent “big changes” that included upgrading the plant in Watsonville. The videos couldn’t have had better timing, especially after back-to-back turbulent years at Martinelli’s. “So, it’s a three-part bottle and when you dent it, the oxygen barrier in the middle delaminates and it slides between the two hard plastic layers and makes it squeak.” (But leave it to the internet to debunk that one, too). “In our bottle, we have two layers of with an oxygen barrier in between,” Martinelli said. In fact, in its early development, he thought consumers might think it was a defect, but it’s actually a clever design intended to keep the juice at its freshest. Martinelli admits the crisp sound was an accidental feature of the bottle. Martinelli & Company, celebrates the company’s 150th anniversary with employees on June 24, 2018, in Watsonville. John Martinelli, chairman of the board at S. It’s kind of funny because that was the first time I learned what an influencer was.” “We sold it for a whole bunch of years, and nothing ever happened until this. “What we’re being told is that something like 500 million people either saw the video or contributed their own video,” Martinelli said. One by one, the TikTok crowd posed for videos where they’d take a sip of Martinelli’s apple juice, put the cap back on, and then bite into thick plastic. Martinelli & Company, ever dreamed of for the 153-year-old apple cider and juice company, but when celebrities like Lizzo caught wind of the trend and wanted to see whether chomping into it actually produced a distinct apple crunch, Martinelli’s seemed to be on the mind of everyone who wanted to debunk the myth for themselves. It wasn’t the type of publicity that John Martinelli, chairman of the board at S.

Apple juice bite bottle