Observing that consumption of dried apricots is up among young people in school cafeterias, Great Lakes International Trading Inc. in Traverse City, MI, recognized opportunities for marketing its imported Turkish dried apricots through new packaging with an appeal to kids. The result is a new packaging concept.

Great Lakes Sales Manager John Battle explained in an interview with The Produce News how the new concept came about.

Yummy Fruit Bus packaging from Great Lakes International Trading is designed to appeal to kids. (Photo courtesy of Great Lakes International Trading)“We have noticed through our foodservice accounts that they are expanding distribution of apricots to school cafeterias,” he said. School foodservice operations having “recognizing the nutritional value of the product,” are, among other things, putting dried apricots on their salad bars.

“All of a sudden, we started noticing kids are eating these apricots in their lunch, and it is a very healthy, sustainable snack,” Mr. Battle said. “So we created a snack pack around our size four Turkish apricots, and we put these into 1.4-ounce trays” and then created packaging designed to look like a school bus, with nine of the trays in each “bus” to appeal to the imagination of the younger demographic.

“It is grabbing the kids’ attention,” he said. They see it as “a fun fruit to eat,” but their moms and dads know that they are giving their kids “a snack for their lunch box that is extremely healthy.”

The dried apricots, besides being yummy, are very high in fiber and in vitamin A and also high in potassium, he said. “It is a great new idea in the fight against childhood obesity.”

Great Lakes is calling the new packaging the Yummy Fruit Bus. On the side of the bus are the words “Awesome Apricot.”

But the Awesome Apricot Yummy Fruit Bus is just the beginning. “We are launching a series of these,” Mr. Battle said. The second in the series will contain Turkish dried cherries and will be called the Chummy Cherry Yummy Fruit Bus.

The packaging will be “in the exact same format with the same size trays.” There will be one ounce of dried cherries in each of the nine trays in the package.

A third product in the series will be added soon but has not yet been finalized, he said.

“On the apricots, we are doing a suggested retail price of $5.49 a bus,” Mr. Battle said. When that price is divided by nine, the price point is comparable with brand-name raisins, “so we are not asking the mother or father who is packing the lunches in the morning to spend any more than a few pennies more to get a sun-dried apricot from Turkey. We think we’ve got a neat little idea here, and the result has been fantastic.”

The Yummy Fruit Bus products are being packed and shipped directly from Izmir, Turkey, and the shelf life is excellent, he said.

Great Lakes International has been importing such dried products as sun-dried apricots, tomatoes and figs for 29 years, Mr. Battle said. The company’s product line now includes a diverse array of sun-dried and dehydrated products from such places as Turkey and Thailand. Among them are dates, figs, mulberries, prunes, raisins, Goji berries, star fruit, bananas, apples, cantaloupe, ginger, mangos, papayas, pineapple, kiwifruit and strawberries in a variety of forms.