Why It's Rare To Find Watermelon Juice In Grocery Stores

Unlike orange or apple juice, it's quite difficult to find fresh watermelon juice at the grocery store. While you might think this is because watermelon juice doesn't have much flavor — it's 92% water, after all — it's actually the result of watermelon juice's incredibly short shelf life. Freshly made watermelon juice is a very sensitive drink. Even if it's kept under the ideal conditions — refrigerated at 39 degrees Fahrenheit — it only remains safe to drink for 12 hours, with its quality beginning to deplete just 2 hours after it's made, according to a 2020 study published in Food and Nutrition Research.

This makes it incredibly hard to sell fresh watermelon juice outside of markets that hand-press the juice themselves in an attempt to sell it off within a few hours. Furthermore, while many raw juices — which are more dangerous than you may think — have a short shelf life compared to pasteurized juices, fresh watermelon juice is so delicate, prone to separation, and generally difficult to mass-produce that it's quite hard to find at most grocery chains.

Instead of fresh watermelon juice, many stores sell what's called watermelon juice drink — these do not consist solely of fruit juice and instead feature additives and sugars that can dampen the fruit's natural flavor. This is especially the case for watermelon juice, which is oftentimes criticized for not tasting like watermelon whatsoever. 

For example, Coca-Cola's juice brand Simply produces its own watermelon juice drink. While it tries its best to emulate the taste of real watermelon juice, its additional ingredients include cane sugar, lemon juice, cherry juice, natural flavors, and water. It tastes only vaguely akin to the fresh watermelon juice you were craving.

Furthermore, while we recognize that it's perfectly fine to drink juice from concentrate, juices and juice cocktails made using watermelon juice concentrate are often so diluted with countless other flavors and sweeteners that they usually miss the mark of what makes fresh watermelon juice so great. So, if you really want to enjoy the taste of fresh watermelon juice but can't find it freshly made at a local market, buying a beginner-friendly home juicer and making it yourself is likely your best bet.