Welcome to the Year of Jam.
King Charles’ Highgrove Estate strawberry preserve, at more than $13 a jar, recently sold out. One baronet, the owner of an English Palladian mansion, told the Daily Beast’s Tom Sykes:
“We sold seven pots on Wednesday. That’s six more than a usual weekday. It was quite extraordinary. A rising tide lifts all boats, I suppose.”
The person we have to thank for this mini-boom in the sweet stuff is post-palacer truther Meghan, the Duchess of Sussex who recently sent out numbered jars of her own homemade strawberry jam, the first product from her incipient lifestyle brand, American Riviera Orchard (ARO).
Do some counting, add a few things up and remember how to work out percentages (carry the one, multiply everything to the power of Pi) and what the numbers show is that the ARO rollout has failed to make much of an impact.
(The urge to use the phrase “sticky situation” here is nearly overwhelming.)
So, earlier this month, the former Suits star-turned temporary royal bridge opener-turned budding magnate sent out 50 numbered jars of homemade jam with grateful recipients soon taking to Instagram to show their thanks. (Side note, the jam was nestled in terracotta pots full of lemons that I would wager are now mouldering on marble bench tops the length and breadth of southern California.)
And of the celebrities who posted about jam that attempted to break the internet, well they have a combined 71.6 million Instagram followers.
Yet, this social media push and the debut of Meghan’s very first product has only translated to ARO Instagram adding about 23,000 followers.
That’s all.
Meghan Markle sent out jars to some of Hollywood’s most followed stars.
And that’s despite the ARO gloopy stuff garnering global press coverage and having major names including Kardashian impresario Kris Jenner (52.5 million), The Office’s Mindy Kaling (6.3 million), Blackish star Tracee Eliss Ross (11.3 million), Suits alum Abigail Spencer (822,000) and Ralph Lauren model and polo player Nacho Figueras (652,000) having shared awkward, slightly cringey posts of them over-enthusing about Meghan’s jam or photos of contrived slices of carefully staged bread.
(A real test of true friendship is, are your mates willing to roll around on the grass or to pretend to actually ingest sugar to help you get your business off the ground?)
The ARO jars of strawberry jam came with numbered labels might have made the duchess’ drop look deliciously exclusive. But those numbers also mean we can work out how many ARO recipients did not go public with having been on the receiving end of Meghan’s munificence.
Eight people posted their very supportive photos of Meghan’s jam, moving them up the Sussex Christmas card list no doubt. So what of the other 42 other names?
Only eight out of 50 people willing to promote ARO means that 84 per cent of recipients of the Duchess’s handiwork did not want or were not to publicly support Meghan or to help her get Jam Inc off the ground.
The strangest omission here is that of Oprah Winfrey, who I know we all agree, would surely have to have gotten jar numero uno.
