If you happen to’ve ever tried to search out Medjool dates in a grocery retailer, you realize it’s not at all times intuitive. You would possibly examine close to the bananas, wander towards the baking aisle, or quit and ask somebody. Till just lately, date packaging hardly ever did itself any favors: generic plastic clamshells, muted colours, minimal context. The fruit could have been candy, but it surely didn’t precisely seem 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 in the event you 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 attempting to promote dates—they have been attempting to rebrand them fully.
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 opponents—is up 33% 12 months over 12 months.”
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 instances than I might rely, simply by no means on their very own. And seems, they’ve a number of dietary advantages on prime of tasting good.
Dates present up in all places: 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, full of peanut butter, whipped into caramel—and immediately, they’re much less of a thriller.
“They’ve at all times been type 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 slightly surprising. However past the packaging, the crew needed to alter 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. They only had to determine the way to get folks to note.
Photograph by Joolies
“Once 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 houses. 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 customers. The concept to launch a standalone model got here when David teamed up with co-founder Greg Willsey, a CPG veteran with expertise at The Great Firm (you realize them from POM, pistachios, and Popchips). Collectively, they launched Joolies at Expo West in 2019 with the purpose of constructing dates simpler to search out, eat, and perceive.
Amanda, who joined the founding crew after years in digital advertising, remembers how powerful it was to get folks to see dates in a different way.
“We’d go into shops and suppose, What’s it about this fruit that’s so laborious for folks to get?”
Are Dates Really That Good for You?
Numerous it got here all the way down to seems. Dates are wrinkly. They’re brown. They’re not probably the most intuitive fruit to eat. However they’re additionally surprisingly candy—like, caramel-sweet—and full of a shocking quantity of fine stuff: fiber, calcium, iron, magnesium. And other people lastly observed.
They’re additionally shelf-stable, naturally energizing, and grown in a means 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 crops and wildlife flourish to assist biodiversity. Each Medjool date is hand-pollinated, hand-harvested, and hand-pitted. The fronds and trimmings from the date palms are was 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 discovered the way to use 100% of their harvest.
“It’s a complete ecosystem,” Amanda stated. “Simply by consuming dates alone, you are serving to the surroundings.”
Now, if consuming six dates a day (as some folks advocate for being pregnant wellness) feels unimaginable, you’ve in all probability already carried out 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 all the things from date brownies and low syrups to salads (instead of dried berries). My private favourite? A sliced date with a pat of fine butter and flaky salt. Easy, however scrumptious.
Regardless of having an array of date-flavored goodies now, Joolies’ bestselling product continues to be their traditional: a pit-free pouch of Medjool dates. “People love comfort,” Amanda laughed. “We’ve discovered that individuals 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 assist smoother labor. One extensively cited examine from the Nationwide Library of Medication discovered that individuals who ate dates day by 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 daily 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 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 crew have their means, they gained’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 technique to eat dates? Are they a staple in your pantry?
