Careful selection, review and shipping make for the best-quality caramel and chocolate apples
When you bite into a caramel apple or a chocolate apple, have you ever wondered how it is made and exactly what your apple looks like under all that coating? Well, with over 100 years of experience in apples, we use this knowledge to find, purchase, create, and ship the best apples possible in several processes…
Buy Apples.
Once an orchard goes through their picking process, they grade the apples to the size and the specs that we want. Basically, we want the same apple under the caramel or chocolate as what you expect to see in a bag of apples when you go into the store with one exception… we don’t care about the color because that is going to get an outside coating of caramel and/or chocolate.
When we purchase our apples, we look at the hardness, flavor, bruises, and other characteristics. If an apple has a bruise, one of the five sets of eyes that we have looking at every apple will see it and reject that apple.
Also, all the apples that come into our factory are pressure-tested to see how hard they are. And that’s critical in terms of the shelf-life of a caramel apple. Because an apple may come to us and look good on the outside, but if it’s not (if its cell structuring is not right, if it is not that hard, etc.), that apple is not going to last on the shelf. And if it’s not something we would eat, then we won’t sell it.
Create Caramel Apples.
The apples will come to us in 18 bushels at a time, which is about 2500 apples. Then, they’ll go through the process of grading, sorting, selecting, sanitizing, and making sure that the apples are good, clean and free of all defects. We then place the stick in it, dip it in caramel, spin the excess caramel off, roll it in peanuts or coconuts or whatever the coating on the outside is, and then the apples go through the packaging process.
Deliver within 72 Hours or Less.
Once the apples are packaged, they go into the warehouse at 45 degrees. They are held there until they are ready to be shipped, which in our case, is less than 24 hours. If a palette of product or case sits in our warehouse much over 24 hours, it’s not shipped out to the customer. Those apples go to the food bank in our local area.
From our plant and the time we place a stick in each apple, to the time the consumer sees it on the shelf, is usually 72 hours or less. We do not make anything in advance so for every apple we put a stick in, we already have a commitment as to the direction that apple is going to go. The apples have a 14 to 16-day shelf-life total.
With this process, we are able to provide the freshest and highest-quality, caramel apples and chocolate apples possible. And if you are not happy with your purchase, just let us know. We have a 100% satisfaction guarantee!
Want to find out more about our 7-step rating process and quality? Please see our free, safety brochure.
And to order your delicious, caramel apples now and have them delivered directly to your door, click here.