Leveraging a decade-high sales surge that has made dates the fastest-growing dried fruit in the country, North America's largest grower and processor of medjool dates is launching a new nationwide consumer brand: Oasis Dates.
Backed by a multimillion-dollar “Earth's Most Versatile Fruit” campaign, the brand aims to establish dates as a mainstream household staple and transform the healthy snack aisle.
Led by CEO Adam Cooper — a former executive at The Wonderful Company known for building powerhouse produce brands like Wonderful Pistachios and Halos — the new brand debuts with whole and pitted medjool organic and conventional dates alongside two brand new functional health-boosted date snacks. The new products are poised to roll out this fall at Kroger, Sam's Club and Whole Foods Market stores nationwide, with additional availability at select national and regional retailers, including Costco, Hy-Vee, H-E-B and The Giant Company.
The subject of The Packer's ongoing blueprint series for building an iconic produce brand, Cooper and Oasis Dates are poised to disrupt the category with an ambitious goal to double the date category over the next five years.
“We're taking a unique approach to bringing that vision to life, guided by a leadership team who helped develop and execute brand playbooks at major produce companies,” says Cooper of the company's goal to reach icon status. “Through unprecedented investment into research and marketing, and my experience building a multibillion-dollar portfolio of brands at The Wonderful Company — including Wonderful Pistachios, Wonderful Halos and POM Wonderful — we're capitalizing upon the category momentum to make dates a beloved staple in more households across the country.”
That market expansion is supported by key operational assets, including an extensive vertically integrated footprint and the world's first and only Regenerative Organic Certified date farm.
“The key ingredients to building an iconic brand are team, capabilities and culture,” Cooper tells The Packer. “We've recruited commercial leaders in produce and CPG, including Hector Altamira, Greg Kurkjian and Deb Origel. These leaders, combined with our vertical integration, scale and culture of discipline and disruption, provide the fuel to truly unlock the potential of this category.”
With over 500,000 square feet of on-site processing, drying, storage and packing, this vertical integration gives Oasis Dates direct control over quality from farm to shelf.
“Vertical integration is fundamental to creating brands consumers can trust,” says Altamira, CEO of Oasis Date Commercial and former CEO of Natural Delights at Bard Valley. “We know firsthand that quality and food safety are something that needs to be controlled at every step of the process. Through our unmatched investments in farming and processing technologies and assets, we can confidently deliver great quality to retailers all year long.”
Oasis Dates combines sustainable practices with scale, ranking in the top 5% globally in Regenerative Organic Certified acreage while using advanced precision farming technology to maintain consistent quality despite unpredictable weather.
Multimillion-Dollar Messaging Anchored in Intelligence
Dates just had their best year in a decade. Retail sales are up 27%, making them the fastest growing and the No. 1 dried fruit in the country, according to Circana data for the 52 weeks ending Dec. 28, 2025.
Ahead of its launch, Oasis Dates conducted the industry's largest ever consumer research study into date consumption, which found that half of current date eaters already use the fruit in four to six different ways on average, from snacking and smoothies to sugar substitutes and pre-workout boosts.
Oasis Dates says that this versatility is the backbone of the brand's messaging and new multimillion-dollar “Earth's Most Versatile Fruit” advertising campaign, anchored to three pillars: healthy sweet treat, natural energy boost and culinary secret weapon.
The new campaign will appear on a broad array of media and social platforms, including Instagram, Pinterest, YouTube and TikTok as well as new cart-stopping in-store displays in the produce aisle. Showcasing the campaign's colorful and bold imagery, in-store is aimed at attracting new consumers to the category and increase sales velocity throughout the year, the company says.
“Everything we do starts with insights, from product innovation to packaging and marketing strategy,” says Origel, senior director of marketing at Oasis Dates. “As the date category grows and competition for consumer attention increases both on shelf and online, we're proud to launch a brand grounded in qualitative and quantitative data.”
That research reveals a massive untapped market, pointing to a vast pool of prospective consumers beyond current buyers.
“Oasis Dates has made an unprecedented investment in research that informs everything from our innovation pipeline and brand campaign to how we show up in market,” Origel says. “It gives us confidence that our products and our approach are responding to real consumer preferences and needs.”
Oasis Dates' initial line of seven products includes two functional snacks:
- Cinnamon Oat + Gut Health Boosted Dates that pair the natural sweetness of medjool dates with three sources of fiber, delivering 8 grams of fiber per serving.
- Salted Caramel + Energy Boosted Dates provide 100 milligrams of natural caffeine from green coffee bean extract, about the same as a cup of coffee, while also delivering 4 grams of fiber per serving.
“Our goal is to not only grow the Oasis Dates brand, but to double the date category over the next five years,” says Cooper. “Our research shows that there are many more potential date consumers than current dates consumers. We look forward to partnering with our retailers and continuing to develop more innovative products that help introduce consumers to delicious and versatile fruit that meets a variety of health and lifestyle needs.”
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