RIND Snacks has launched a line of “Skin-on Superfruit” dried-fruit snacks, distinguished by their whole-fruit inclusion of both fruit flesh and peels, with no sugar or no sulfites added. The line’s three flavors include “California Kiwi” and two blends: “Tropical” (bittersweet orange, organic pineapple, kiwi) and “Orchard” (persimmon, apple, peach). All contain nothing but slices of U.S.-grown and dried fruit. 
 
RIND’s offerings feed a growing consumer appetite for naturally healthier snacks. U.S. retail sales of specialty nuts, dried fruits and trail mixes reached $1.46B in 2016. The “on-the-go” snackable fruit and vegetable category that RIND participates in posted a 10% compound annual growth rate from 2012 to 2016.
 
But perhaps the most telling statistic about the dried fruit snack market’s growth in particular comes from an analysis of Amazon.com sales. Dried fruit snacks outperformed growth of all other peer segments in the e-commerce leader’s “Snacks & Sweets” category, with an increase of 75% in 2017.
 
RIND founder Matt Weiss’s launch of a snack line focused on maximizing the nutritional potency found in high-fiber, vitamin-rich, skin-on dried fruits comes from a commitment to healthy food that’s been part of his family legacy for three generations. Mr. Weiss’s great-grandmother, Helen Seitner, was a health food pioneer who sold bulk natural foods from her “Stay-Well” health shop in Michigan in the 1920’s. 
 
For Weiss, RIND represents his great-grandmother’s visionary passion for both personal health and environmental sustainability. The key to those twin values is in his products’ fruit peels. On average, fruit rinds contain three to four times the fiber of an equivalent serving of fruit flesh and also hold the greatest concentration of nutrients like antioxidant-dense vitamin C. That nutritional boost for the body is complemented by the way use of the peel also aids the earth. Discarded and edible fruit peels are a major component of the food scraps that account for over 21% of total municipal waste in the U.S. and are part of the more than 38 million tons of food discarded every year.