Interview with Reneé Hewitt, Media & Communications Manager at Crispy Green.

Crispy Green began in 2004 when food industry entrepreneur Angela Liu set out to transform how people snack by offering a natural, convenient way to enjoy fruit anytime, anywhere.

Since then, the New Jersey company has grown the Crispy Fruit line into the best-selling freeze-dried fruit brand in the United States, distributing it nationwide through mass markets, club markets, natural foods, and, most recently, Whole Foods Market.

It has also expanded its portfolio with a Piña Picante air-dried pineapple line and subscription programs such as the Healthy Habits Monthly Supply Box.

In an interview with Produce Leaders, Reneé Hewitt, Media & Communications Manager at Crispy Green, shared that the company positions itself at the confluence of clean-label innovation, community advocacy, and environmental stewardship.

“For us, it’s more than just a tagline it’s a philosophy that drives everything we do. We believe good food should not only taste good but also be good for you. We are proud that our products positively impact people’s lives by enhancing their fruit intake while enjoying their snacking.”

“We promote healthy living through healthy eating by partnering with organizations like the Healthy Family Project, ECP Champs, and Future Shoppers of America. We also collaborate with Wakefern/Inserra dietitians on events like YMCA Healthy Kids Day to promote nutrition and wellness. We’ve joined HyVee’s KidsFIT 8-State Midwest Squat Challenge Program, inspiring kids to get moving and make healthy choices,” shared Hewitt.

That philosophy helped the company earn shelf space at more than 15,000 retail points of sale and foster long-term relationships with food banks in New Jersey, North Carolina, and Georgia, where donations of Crispy Fruit and Piña Picante flowed after Hurricane Helene.

The flagship product, Crispy Fruit, remains the single-ingredient snack introduced two decades ago:

“Made from 100% pure fruit with no added sugar, preservatives, or artificial ingredients, our Crispy Fruit delivers the fresh flavor and nutrition of fruit in a light, crunchy texture perfect for busy, on-the-go lifestyles.”

Apples, mangoes, strawberries, bananas, pears, pineapples, and tangerines are harvested at peak ripeness, quick-frozen, and placed in a proprietary freeze-drying chamber that removes 98 percent of moisture without degrading natural color or vitamin content, a method that gives each pouch a three-year ambient shelf life and substantially reduces food waste throughout the supply chain.

To lower its own material footprint, Crispy Green has cut outer-bag film by roughly 30 percent and now packs 53 percent more fruit by weight into every single-serve bag.

The new Trial Pack bundles four of the company’s best-selling flavors: Apple, Mango, Pineapple, and Strawberry, under one recyclable sleeve to encourage sampling while staying within those tightened packaging metrics.

While sales data remain private, company executives note that online demand for snack-size multi-packs rose double digits year-over-year through 2024, boosted by the 4-PACK format that Angela Liu’s team introduced to meet lunchbox and portion-control trends.

The firm’s content platform Smart Lifebites attracts more than a quarter-million unique readers annually with recipes, fitness challenges, and wellness articles, reinforcing brand loyalty beyond the aisle.

Community work extends to the annual Crispy Green Go Scholarship, which awards college art-and-design students for projects that communicate healthy living, and to Global Forestry Project offsets that finance reforestation plots in Central America.

Crispy Green amplifies through downloadable calendars and social-media challenges that encourage acts of generosity accompanied by the sharing of its fruit pouches.

Product development remains focused on what Liu calls “real fruit, re-imagined,” and the research team is experimenting with additional air-dried formats that meet internal sodium and sugar thresholds while providing tropical flavor profiles absent from U.S. orchards.

Chief operations officers say future priorities include expanding recyclable components to primary pouches, deepening retailer dietitian partnerships, and raising the corporate volunteer rate beyond the current 35 percent of total staff.

Investors and category analysts credit the brand’s consistency one stock keeping unit has not changed ingredient statements since 2004 with building consumer trust at a time when many snack concepts chase functional additives.

“Crispy Fruit stands out with its trio of uniquely satisfying qualities: premium quality with a variety of fun flavors, clean ingredients you can feel good about (think no added sugar, plant-based and nutritional), and the ultimate convenience of a better-for-you snack all wrapped in a 4-PACK. It’s real fruit, reimagined for modern snacking.”

Whether through philanthropic meal assemblies at Bloomfield Presbyterian Church on the Green, Feeding America collaborations that help supply 600,000 meals during the holidays, or educational booths at YMCA Healthy Kids Day, the company maintains that its impact is measured not just in dollar sales but in healthier eating habits across the families it serves.

The Company’s long-term objective is to double U.S. household penetration for freeze-dried fruit by 2030 an objective she sees as achievable if retailers continue to index shelf sets toward plant-based, minimally processed snacks and if consumers keep equating kindness with the sharing of better-for-you options.

As the snack aisle evolves, Crispy Green’s leadership believes its early commitment to “simple, delicious, and nutritious” will remain the cornerstone that sustains category dominance and community relevance for the next twenty years.