Recently, when that friend passed away at 97, Vultaggio said his family sent him the ashes. "He's buried in my backyard," he explained. In fact, one of his closest and most important relationships was with that first employer of his many decades ago. Growing up, he watched his own father work at a grocery store as a manager and as an adult, Vultaggio says some of his greatest friendships stem from those early days bagging produce at that grocery store in Brooklyn, New York. Decades ago, however, he was 13 years old clocking in at a grocery store after a day of school so that he could earn $1 per hour. Today, Vultaggio is estimated to be worth $3 billion. We’ve now shipped all of our product overnight so that our trucks will be more efficient.” Because, you know, you’ve been down the road at one o’clock in the morning, the roads are a lot less crowded. We've got to come in at night.' It was a simple decision. And I said, 'We’ve got to get our trucks off the roads during the day. It was like two o’clock in the afternoon. “One day I was on the George Washington Bridge, and it was backed up. “If you keep doing those things, you can kind of offset costs and rising costs, and get the consumer value and the ability to buy your product and everybody’s happy,” Vultaggio explained, noting that, as a businessman, his job is to stay ahead of increasing costs. Its cans are made of aluminum (the price for which increased by 17.03% since the start of 2022) so now it's shaving off how much aluminum it uses by narrowing up the neck of the can. Instead of cranking up the value of its iced tea, the company has opted to snip out the extra expenses that might increase the price. Still, through the decades, Arizona iced tea has held the line. The price for basic necessities has shot up in the past year, however, with surging inflation rates marking up milk and gas to $4.02 and $4.11, respectively. At the time, a gallon of whole milk was $1.13, a gallon of gas was the exact same and a can of Arizona iced tea was 99 cents. Vultaggio co-founded Arizona Beverages USA 30 years ago - on May 5, 1992, to be exact. “Our point is what you want to do is have a customer come in and get a fair value on a can of tea or juice and then buy other things in your store to offset those costs.” Don Vultaggio (center) co-owns the company with his sons, Wesley (left) and Spencer (right). More, it might cause a customer to overlook the tall, brilliant cans oft found in the refrigerated sections of bodegas, corner stores and pharmacy chains in the future. After all, an increase in price for a retailer means a change in what a consumer might purchase from them altogether. For Vultaggio, such changes have negative trickle-down effects he’s made a point to avoid. “To me, the worst day as a salesman is to go to a retailer and say, ‘Hey, by the way, I’m raising the price on that can today,” Vultaggio explained in his interview with TODAY. In a now-viral article published last week, the LA Times posed the question: " As inflation soars, how is AriZona iced tea still 99 cents?"
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