While apples are the No. 2 fresh fruit item consumers purchase, according to The Packer’s Fresh Trends 2026 survey, consumption overall has plateaued. An effort launched a little more than two years ago aims to change that.
“Eat More Apples” is a grassroots campaign made up of apple growers, marketers and produce industry insiders. It seeks to tap into the health and wellness benefits of apples and connect with younger consumers, who are less likely to buy apples.
“We’re still in our early stages,” says Kaari Stannard, president and CEO of Yes Apples and The Packer’s 2020 Apple Person of the Year. “The goal is rising tides raise all boats. We’re at a situation in our industry that we’ve got consumption going down for whatever reason, you could pinpoint a thousand different reasons, but we have to act now, and we have to act together as an industry.”
Stannard, an Eat More Apples board member, says this time to act goes beyond individual state efforts to drive consumption; it needs to be an industrywide effort.
“The goal is to grow consumption and educate our consumers,” she says. “Really, truly educate them.”
Stannard points out that while there are many apple marketers from across the country from California, Idaho, Utah, New York, Ohio, Virginia, Wisconsin, Pennsylvania, Michigan and Washington, the “Eat More Apples” campaign “is not to educate the consumer and push one brand; that’s also the differentiation. In fact, what we’re trying to do is educate on all apples.”
“My goal out of that is to have a seat at the table, be working collaboratively with these people and to hopefully get our younger people eating more apples, because we have a great product,” she adds. “We are the produce that is grab-and-go. We have all the health benefits.”
The Need
“What we need to do is break through the noise of the confusion, because there are so many [varieties],” Stannard says. “That’s the good and the bad.”
Julie DeJarnatt, vice president of marketing and brand strategy for Chelan Fresh and The Packer’s 2025 Apple Person of the Year, says this effort is in tandem with retailers, helping to boost overall consumption.
“Too many times, I think, in the past, a lot of marketing stops at the retailer,” she says. “But there hasn’t been that kind of pull from the customer as well.”
DeJarnatt, who is a board member of Eat More Apples, says this campaign seeks to create an increased demand for apples, which will fuel higher returns.
“As consumption goes down, you don’t want the footprint getting reduced because there’s other things out there,” she says. “We’re coming along and helping partner with [retailers] to create the demand that we all want and need for this category.”
DeJarnatt says she’s appreciative of all of the support the “Eat More Apples” campaign has had so far, especially as a volunteer-only effort.
“It blows me away how much the industry has stepped in and supported the initiative and [how] so many grower families out there that are really, really dependent and hopeful that this is going to pay dividends back to them,” she says.
Campaign’s Next Steps
DeJarnatt and board member Brenda Briggs, vice president of sales and marketing with Rice Fruit Co., say the campaign is in the process of understanding the results of a health and wellness messaging survey.
Eat More Apples centered the messaging around different pillars of health and wellness and then surveyed more than 6,000 consumers about both general apple knowledge and how health and wellness influencers impacted that perception to gauge what type of messaging most resonates with each generation.
“Part of our research coming into this project showed us that the younger consumers are the ones that are eating fewer apples and buying other items,” Briggs says. “So, that needs to be a strong focus of what we’re doing across the generations.”
DeJarnatt says early results highlight messaging around gut health resonated the most, compared to mental health, hydration and recovery and more.
“It’s also going to give us the demographics of which one of the messages lands better with the different demographics — the young males versus maybe somebody who’s a little bit older with different health concerns,” she says.
Then DeJarnatt says Eat More Apples will create an agency request for proposal to launch the messaging at a national scale. That will take some fundraising, she adds.
“Our industry has shown up in a good way to help with some seed money,” she says. “Partners of our industry have shown up. You have people like Storage Control Systems and Wilbur Ellis and those partners who have said: ‘This is important to those growers I support.’”
However, DeJarnatt and Briggs say the funding for this effort needs to look beyond growers to help bring forth this objective.
“We’re working through that fundraising strategy now and lining up our cause with the potential donors — who could come in from private funds, public funds, all of that — in order to get the funding needed to launch that national-scale campaign,” she says.
Campaign Goals
Briggs says a major goal for the project is to get consumers more engaged with apples in a way that truly drives placement in grocery stores.
“We want people to really understand the health benefits and really embrace the product and then experiment with the different varieties out there,” she says. “There’s never been a time in the industry where we’ve had better-tasting apples across the country.”
Briggs says the industry has focused so much attention on advertising to peers and retailers that she sees a strong potential in connecting directly with consumers to drive excitement.
“We want a whole new generation of people grabbing apples because they enjoy them and they know they’re good for them,” she says.
DeJarnatt says she also sees opportunities for the next generation of apple growers to take over the family farm without worry about the future.
“Not just [for them to] feel like they can survive and struggle, but they can actually thrive in the growing industry again,” she says. “There’s no more that this industry could be doing to grow the apples that they are [than] to sustain the families that are behind them. It’s not enough in today’s environment with the movement that we have.”
Briggs also hopes the “Eat More Apples” effort will help growers have a more profitable future.
“If we could get to a point where growers are profitable and not under such strain as they’ve been under for the last decade or more, it would be spectacular,” she says.
This effort to drive consumption and emphasize health messaging will benefit not only consumers but also growers, Briggs adds.
“It is such a wonderful piece of fruit,” she says. “It’s got flavor, you don’t have to force it on your kid, and it’s got the soluble and insoluble fiber. It’s going to do so many things to help that child, so that’s a huge win. It also gives the growers something to feel like they can be sustainable over time and the fruit that they’re growing is going to be one that has got high demand, and [it gives] something that their family can continue on for future generations. Farming is not a job; it’s a way of life.”
