Jewel Date Company vs Desert Sun Dates: Ingredient House or Farm-Direct Fruit?

Jewel Date Company is a Coachella Valley date family operating mainly as an ingredient supplier — date paste, date powder, diced dates and date sugar flowing into food manufacturing. They’re also the family who bought and restored Shields Date Garden when it was at risk of being demolished — worth knowing next time you’re drinking a date shake there. That earns respect in this valley.

What Jewel does well

Ingredients at manufacturing scale, and stewardship. If you make energy bars or bakery goods by the ton, a paste-and-powder house is exactly who you call.

We grow these. Golden Zahidi Dates — Nutty, Less Sweet, Never Sticky | California Farm-Direct from our family farm in Sky Valley, California — from $15/lb, shipping included. See them →

What farm-direct from us looks like

Whole fruit from one named farm: jumbo Medjool from $19, golden Zahidi from $15 — and if date paste is what you’re after, our 5-minute method turns a box of whole fruit into it with one ingredient. Kitchens and bakeries buying volume: cases from $9.00/lb freight included.

The honest verdict

Manufacturing quantities of paste and powder? Jewel is built for that. Whole dates from the family that grew them — for the table, the shelf or the small kitchen? That’s us. More of the valley: the grower’s guide.

Written by Jason Shopshear of Desert Sun Dates, Sky Valley, California.