"The sale of the appleless apple juice product earned the Beech-Nut Corporation approximately $60 million over a ten-year period." (Socyberty)
Beech-Nut which started out as a meatpacking company had expanded and began producing other products, one in particular being apple juice. The scandal arose when Beech-Nut decided to change producers of their product in order to lower cost. They found that if they sold something that looked and tasted similar to apple juice, that in fact had no actual apple product in it, then many people wouldn’t know the difference and they could make a larger profit. However this became an issue when the company still marketed the product as apple juice and thus the issue of false advertising.
This had been going on for about 10 years until an investigator became curious and decided to look into the brand. His research lead him to find that Beech-Nut was in fact cutting corners in the creation of their product and marketing it falsely to consumers and so he sued the company and it’s executives. The trial took two years but found both the CEOs of Beech-Nut and the chemical company providing the artificial flavoring in jail and the companies both paying fines.
During the investigation period Beech-Nut still chose to sell their product in other countries at a discount in order to earn some money. When consumers found out about this their idea of the company became even more tarnished. In a few short years a well respected company was completely diminished in the eyes of the consumers and it will take a long time to heal this wound.
