Meghan Markle‘s American Riviera Orchard lifestyle brand is off to the races.
“The rollout for American Riviera Orchard is already off to a strong start. The website has over 100,000 who have signed up to hear about the first products launched,” a source exclusively tells Us Weekly. “Meghan is very pleased with the early interest it has gained.”
The Duchess of Sussex, 42, quietly announced the brand’s launch in March by debuting an official Instagram account. (Meghan previously shuttered her personal social media pages ahead of marrying Prince Harry in 2018.) At the time, Us confirmed that Meghan filed trademarks for the brand to sell cutlery, cookbooks and jarred foods. The United States Patent and Trademark Office accepted the patent requests.
“[She] is so excited to see how people enjoy her products and use them in their everyday lives,” the insider adds.
American Riviera Orchard’s first product was strawberry jam, which Meghan sent to an array of her celebrity friends.
“This jam is my jam,” Abigail Spencer, Meghan’s former Suits costar and longtime friend, wrote via Instagram in April. “A delicious taste of what’s to come indeed. Love you so M.”
Each jar is decorated with the brand’s official label, featuring American Riviera Orchard written in cursive below a gilded logo. Meghan also has handwritten the flavor type on the label using her calligraphy skills.
Last month, polo player Ignacio “Nacho” Figueras revealed that the brand also has raspberry jam. Figueras, 47, shared a photo of the raspberry preserves via his Instagram Story in June. Figueras, a close friend of 39-year-old Harry, added a heart emoji to his post.
Meghan started a second career after she and Harry stepped down from their duties as senior working royals in 2020 and relocated to California with son Prince Archie, 5, and daughter Princess Lilibet. 3. As part of their next steps, Harry and Meghan signed a multi-year deal with Netflix to create several new projects.
“They have a couple of unscripted things they’re working on with Brandon [Reigg, Netflix’s VP of Unscripted and Documentary],” Bela Bajaria, the streaming platform’s chief content officer, said during the New on Netflix press event in January. “And they actually have, like, a bunch of development. All very early development, with a movie, a TV show and a couple of unscripted shows. But yeah, the movie’s great.”
Harry and Meghan’s Archewell Productions company already produced a six-part docuseries titled Harry & Meghan, which was released in December 2022, about the couple’s decision to leave their royal roles, and a Heart of Invictus doc about Harry’s Invictus Games dropped in August 2023. The couple is currently producing an adaptation of Carley Fortune’s romance novel Meet Me at the Lake, a docuseries about polo and a cooking show starring the duchess.
Meghan also hosts the podcast “Archetypes,” which aired its first season on Spotify. It’s second season will be released via Lemonada Media.
“[She] wants to do mostly philanthropic-type content,” another source previously told Us in February. “She considers herself too academic for entertainment-only. She doesn’t want the podcast to be celebrity-driven, though she’ll have some stars on.”
With reporting by Travis Cronin