For those who’ve ever tried to seek out Medjool dates in a grocery retailer, you already know it’s not all the time intuitive. You would possibly verify close to the bananas, wander towards the baking aisle, or surrender and ask somebody. Till lately, date packaging hardly ever did itself any favors: generic plastic clamshells, muted colours, minimal context. The fruit could have been candy, nevertheless it didn’t precisely appear to be it.
That began to vary in 2019, when a line of brightly packaged, California-grown Medjool dates known as Joolies began displaying up in shops throughout the nation. You’ve most likely seen them even in case you don’t know the identify: turquoise stand-up pouches stamped with a daring yellow solar, sitting up within the produce part. Joolies wasn’t simply attempting to promote dates—they have been attempting to rebrand them totally.
And it’s working. “We’re now in 6,000 to 7,000 doorways,” stated Amanda Sains, advertising director and founding crew member at Joolies. “As a complete, the date class—us and our rivals—is up 33% yr over yr.”
And so they’re not the one ones using the date wave. Grocery retailer cabinets are all of the sudden filled with individually packed and chocolate-covered date snacks from manufacturers like Date Higher, True Dates (they make a cookie dough model), and Realsy, with their peanut butter-stuffed dates in punchy blue luggage. The technique? Lean into dessert-like flavors, cute packaging, and that naturally caramel-y style.
TikTok’s caught on, too. We’ve made “date Twix” within the Check Kitchen and even tried the viral date bark (simply flatten them out, cowl in chocolate and peanut butter, and freeze).
So, Why Is Everybody Consuming Dates All of a Sudden?
I’ll admit, if somebody informed me three years in the past that dates have been about to have their second, I’d’ve been confused. On the time, my psychological picture of a date was someplace between a prune and a fig, perhaps tucked into a vacation charcuterie board or hidden in a baked good. My household by no means purchased them, and I couldn’t have informed you what they tasted like. Seems, I’d eaten them extra occasions than I might depend, simply by no means on their very own.
Dates present up all over the place: in protein bars, smoothie bases, breakfast cookies. And but, lots of people nonetheless don’t know what they’re or what to do with them. Recently, although, one thing’s modified. I’ve been seeing them throughout social media—drenched in chocolate, filled with peanut butter, whipped into caramel—and all of the sudden, they’re much less of a thriller.
“They’ve all the time been form of misunderstood,” Amanda defined to me. “They’re candy, scrumptious, and so good for you, however they’ve been caught in ugly packaging.”
That meant growing a model that was contemporary, playful, and a bit sudden. However past the packaging, the crew wished to vary how People considered dates altogether, not simply as a baking ingredient or well being meals retailer oddity, however as an on a regular basis staple.
Photograph by Joolies
“If you journey to Morocco, Greece, the UK, even Australia, you notice how far more normalized date consumption is,” Amanda defined. “You’ll see them on the checkout counter or in bowls at individuals’s properties. Within the U.S., that simply hasn’t been the case.”
That hole is a part of what Joolies got down to shut. The corporate is an offshoot of La Quinta Date Growers, a family-owned farm in California’s Coachella Valley that’s been rising natural Medjool dates since 1979. Co-founder David Kohl runs the farm his grandfather began, and earlier than Joolies, their dates have been by no means offered on to shoppers. The thought to launch a standalone model got here when David teamed up with co-founder Greg Willsey, a CPG veteran with expertise at The Fantastic Firm (you already know them from POM, pistachios, and Popchips). Collectively, they launched Joolies at Expo West in 2019 with the aim of constructing dates simpler to seek out, eat, and perceive.
Are Dates Really That Good for You?
Amanda, who joined the founding crew after years in digital advertising, remembers the early days of planning. “We’d go into shops and suppose, What’s it about this fruit that’s so arduous for individuals to get?”
Plenty of it got here right down to appears. Dates are wrinkly. They’re brown. They’re not essentially the most intuitive fruit to eat. However they’re additionally surprisingly candy and filled with a shocking quantity of excellent stuff: fiber, calcium, iron, magnesium.
They’re additionally shelf-stable, naturally energizing, and grown in a method that’s way more sustainable than individuals notice.
On Joolies’ thousand-acre farm, each Medjool date is hand-pollinated, hand-harvested, and hand-pitted. The fronds and trimmings from the date palms are become pure fertilizer. The pits are fed to cattle. And any fruit that doesn’t meet beauty requirements? It goes into their “Ugglies” line, will get reworked into date paste (in collaboration with their sister firm, Desert Valley Dates), or turns into a base for his or her candy snack line, Date Pops.
In brief, they’ve found out easy methods to use 100% of their harvest.
“It’s a complete ecosystem,” Amanda stated. “Simply by consuming dates alone, you are serving to the setting.”
Now, if consuming six dates a day (as some individuals suggest for being pregnant wellness) feels inconceivable, you’ve most likely already carried out it with out realizing. That very same date paste exhibits up in bars from RX, Lärabar, and different well being manufacturers.
At Food52, we’ve seen it utilized in every little thing from date brownies and occasional syrups to salads (instead of dried berries). My private favourite? A sliced date with a pat of excellent butter and flaky salt. Easy, however scrumptious.
Regardless of having an array of date-flavored goodies now, Joolies’ bestselling product remains to be their traditional: a pit-free pouch of Medjool dates. “People love comfort,” Amanda laughed. “We’ve discovered that folks love simply with the ability to simply attain in and snack.”
However the advantages transcend straightforward snacking. Dates have lengthy been touted as a superfood for being pregnant—excessive in B nutritional vitamins, particularly folate, and believed to help smoother labor. One broadly cited examine from the Nationwide Library of Medication discovered that individuals who ate dates each day of their last month of being pregnant had shorter labors and wanted fewer medical interventions. Whether or not it’s anecdotal or organic, the proof is compelling—and in my deep-dive I did discover that it is backed by loads of passionate Reddit threads.
“I ate dates virtually each day for the final 4 weeks of my being pregnant, and I did have a surprisingly fast supply,” one lady stated.
Dietary advantages apart, they’ve been a part of world meals tradition for hundreds of years, hailing from the Center Japanese and North African areas.
“It’s one of many oldest cultivated fruits,” Amanda stated. “It’s talked about within the Quran, the Bible. It has this unimaginable historical past.”
It additionally has a future. As extra individuals flip to plant-based snacking and rethink their sugar consumption, dates are completely positioned to rise. They’re nature’s sweet, sure—however they’re additionally versatile, nutrient-dense, and surprisingly sustainable. And if Amanda and the remainder of the Joolies crew have their method, they received’t simply be the fruit you discover in a bar. They’ll be entrance and heart in your pantry.
So the following time you notice a field or pouch within the produce part? Seize it. You would possibly simply get hooked.
6 Methods to Eat Dates If You’re Not Certain The place to Begin
What’s your favourite solution to eat dates? Are they a staple in your pantry?
