Back-to-school season is driving renewed demand for fresh-cut produce snack packs, with Nickey Gregory Co. reporting steady year-over-year growth in school snack pack programs. The company ships half-cup portion packs — 50 to a case — covering around 50 different fruit and vegetable items including apple slices, orange slices, carrot sticks, and celery sticks, designed to meet school nutrition requirements and save staff prep time. Apple slices remain the top-selling item with a 21-day shelf life, but schools are also experimenting with tri-colored cauliflower, jicama sticks, dragon fruit, and kiwi.
On the foodservice side, the company is seeing a parallel trend: restaurants and food businesses are ordering more fresh-cut ingredients because they don't have the kitchen labor to do the cutting themselves. This mirrors a broader industry shift where labor savings are becoming the primary commercial driver for fresh-cut adoption — more so than price or convenience alone.
For produce salespeople and category managers, the fresh-cut segment offers a growing channel worth tracking, particularly as labor costs remain elevated across foodservice. The school nutrition program pipeline in particular is tied to federal grant funding, which can create relatively predictable demand through the academic year.