Greetings Colorado and beyond.  We’re back in business making those great tasting, flavorful, crunchy apple chips that many Coloradoans came to love from 2012 – 2016.  We started growing our business at farmers markets and Colorado events and eventually sold wholesale to great retail customers like Lucky’s Market, Alfalfas and Whole Foods.  After we won Naturally Boulder’s Pitch Slam competition in 2014 and distribution grew to 300+ stores, our brand was acquired in 2016 and rebranded into a new brand name.

Unfortunately for the new owners, sales did not pan out as expected and they discontinued the new brand in Dec. 2018.  Sometimes these things work out; sometimes they do not.  Part of our agreement when we sold the brand included the option to retain the rights to Appleooz if the brand name was not being used.

Please spread the word to your friends and family, share on social media and place your orders when you are ready.  Our goal is to sell direct to consumer on our website and eCommerce platforms like Amazon with very minimal retail business.

Kids have always been and will always be one of our favorite customers. In fact, it was the kids’ love of our product when we were experimenting with ideas before launch that inspired us to create a healthy snack brand for kids.

When we started in 2012, there were very few healthy alternatives for kids to snack on that did not have lots of added sugars and preservatives.  We set out to create that product to help provide healthy fuel for our youth in Colorado.

We made sample batches of crunchy apple chips and gave them away to friends and family to get their feedback.  Each time we did that, they would bring them home to share with their families.  Invariably, our friends would call back in a week telling us that their kids were asking “When can we get more of those apple things Dad?”

‘Kidz Chooz Appleooz’ became a slogan to help kids pronounce and remember our brand name.

Did you know that ½ cup of dried apples equals one daily serving of fresh fruit from a nutrition standpoint?  For that reason, the Boulder Valley School District became our first wholesale customer.

We met with school officials when we started and submitted our product for consideration.  If schools purchase food products that have healthy ingredients, they are able to receive a subsidy from the state/federal government that reduces their overall cost to buy the product.

We sold our product to BVSD well below our wholesale prices to support healthy snacking in schools and build a relationship with our community.  The schools started out serving 300 kids per month and eventually grew that to serving over 800 kids/month.  Once a month, the kids were offered crunchy apple chips instead of a fresh apple (that they normally take one bite out of throw away).

We’ll always be appreciative of the school district supporting our brand in  the early days…

We started making crunchy dried apples in 2012 because our founder was sick and tired of watching his backyard apples go to waste. Every Fall, he would watch squirrels take one bite out of an apple and discard it.  The sheer volume of food going to waste created incentive to do something about it.

Fast forward to 2014 and we wanted to expand that basic goal to include our community and do something good with the apples that we harvested.  We were already supplying our apple chips to the school district and wondered if there was a way to get the kids involved in helping us harvest these backyard apples.

And Donate Colorado Apples was born.  Each Fall, we invited local homeowners to sign up to have their backyard apples harvested.  In 2014, we had a banner apple year in Colorado and over 40 home owners signed up for the program.  We worked with the schools to invite kids to help us out with the harvest, along with girl scout troops and lots of local parents and friends.  We harvested over 2500 pounds of local apples that year.  The kids harvested the apples, brought them to our commercial kitchen and we turned them into crunchy apple chips that were donated to the schools.

After the Fall, the kids that participated in the harvest were invited back to our commercial kitchen to see how the apples are turned into crunchy apple chips and packaged.  So the kids were able to participate in every phase of our business – from harvest to production to packaging to retail. It was a great way to give back to our community and inspire kids to think about their own entrepreneurial endeavors when they get older.