For those who’ve ever tried to seek out Medjool dates in a grocery retailer, you recognize it’s not all the time intuitive. You may verify close to the bananas, wander towards the baking aisle, or hand over and ask somebody. Till lately, date packaging not often did itself any favors: generic plastic clamshells, muted colours, minimal context. The fruit might have been candy, but it surely didn’t precisely appear like it.
That began to alter in 2019, when a line of brightly packaged, California-grown Medjool dates known as Joolies began exhibiting up in shops throughout the nation. You’ve in all probability seen them even if you happen to don’t know the title: turquoise stand-up pouches stamped with a daring yellow solar, sitting up within the produce part. Joolies wasn’t simply making an attempt to promote dates—they have been making an attempt to rebrand them totally.
And it’s working. “We’re now in 6,000 to 7,000 doorways,” mentioned Amanda Sains, advertising and marketing director and founding staff member at Joolies. “As a complete, the date class—us and our rivals—is up 33% yr over yr.”
So, Why Is Everybody Consuming Dates All of a Sudden?
I’ll admit, if somebody advised 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, possibly tucked into a vacation charcuterie board or hidden in a baked good. My household by no means purchased them, and I couldn’t have advised you what they tasted like. Seems, I’d eaten them extra occasions than I might depend, simply by no means on their very own. And seems, they’ve numerous dietary advantages on high of tasting good.
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. Currently, 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 sort 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 creating a model that was recent, playful, and a bit sudden. However past the packaging, the staff wished to alter how People seen dates altogether, not simply as a baking ingredient or well being meals retailer oddity, however as an on a regular basis staple. They simply had to determine methods to get folks to note.
Photograph by Joolies
“While you journey to Morocco, Greece, the UK, even Australia, you understand how far more normalized date consumption is,” Amanda defined. “You’ll see them on the checkout counter or in bowls at folks’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 bought on to customers. 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 recognize them from POM, pistachios, and Popchips). Collectively, they launched Joolies at Expo West in 2019 with the purpose of constructing dates simpler to seek out, eat, and perceive.
Amanda, who joined the founding staff after years in digital advertising and marketing, remembers how robust it was to get folks to see dates in another way.
“We’d go into shops and assume, What’s it about this fruit that’s so exhausting for folks to get?”
Are Dates Really That Good for You?
Plenty of it got here right down to seems. Dates are wrinkly. They’re brown. They’re not essentially the most intuitive fruit to eat. However they’re additionally surprisingly candy—like, caramel-sweet—and full of a shocking quantity of excellent stuff: fiber, calcium, iron, magnesium. And folks lastly seen.
They’re additionally shelf-stable, naturally energizing, and grown in a method that’s much more sustainable than folks understand.
On their thousand-acre farm, Joolies makes use of drip irrigation to preserve water and lets native vegetation and wildlife flourish to help biodiversity. 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.
Briefly, they’ve discovered methods to use 100% of their harvest.
“It’s a complete ecosystem,” Amanda mentioned. “Simply by consuming dates alone, you are serving to the surroundings.”
Now, if consuming six dates a day (as some folks suggest for being pregnant wellness) feels unimaginable, you’ve in all probability already achieved it with out realizing. That very same date paste exhibits up in bars from RX, Lärabar, and different well being manufacturers. You’ll additionally discover it in smoothies, sauces, and baked items throughout TikTok.
At Food52, we’ve seen it utilized in every part 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 basic: a pit-free pouch of Medjool dates. “People love comfort,” Amanda laughed. “We’ve discovered that individuals love simply having the ability to simply attain in and snack.”
However the advantages transcend simple 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 research from the Nationwide Library of Drugs discovered that individuals who ate dates every day of their remaining 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 nearly each day for the final 4 weeks of my being pregnant, and I did have an incredibly fast supply,” one girl mentioned.
Dietary advantages apart, they’ve been a part of international meals tradition for hundreds of years, hailing from the Center Japanese and North African areas.
“It’s one of many oldest cultivated fruits,” Amanda mentioned. “It’s talked about within the Quran, the Bible. It has this unimaginable historical past.”
It additionally has a future. As extra folks 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 staff have their method, they gained’t simply be the fruit you discover in a bar. They’ll be entrance and heart in your pantry.
So the subsequent time you see a field or pouch within the produce part? Seize it. You may simply get hooked.
6 Methods to Eat Dates If You’re Not Positive The place to Begin
What’s your favourite strategy to eat dates? Are they a staple in your pantry?
