Sliced passion fruit in green plate

Featured image by Elina Sazonova via Pexels.

Passion fruit is a wonderful, unique fruit used in a wide variety of sweets recipes. It is the edible fruit of the passionflower, which is grown commercially in tropical climates. The plant itself originated in Brazil. It is most commonly produced in Hawaii and other international tropical locales. California produces just a small amount of the passion fruit on the market.

If you live in central, Midwest, or eastern America, finding a good reputable source for passion fruit might pose a slight challenge. Since a majority of it is produces overseas, you won’t necessarily find a local source. This article is going to go through some of the best stores and companies through which you can find good, sustainably grown passion fruit that is neither lacking in quality nor taste.

When Is The Best Time Of Year To Order Passion Fruit?

Fresh passion fruit drink in a glass

Image by: Pexels.

Passion fruit is a perennial, meaning it has a wide and varied growing season. Through early spring up until late fall, you can find passion fruit being grown in nearly any tropical climate.

There might be a small stretch during early summer and winter where ordering passion fruit might be more difficult. This tends to be the major break in their growing season.Other than that, they are perennial fruits that go pretty much all year round.

The Health Benefits Of Passion Fruit

This wonderful, weird fruit has a surprising number of vitamins and nutrients. It is high in vitamin C, which is universally known for boosting your immune system response.It is also rich in beta-cryptoxanthin and alpha-carotene, both of which are known to boost your immunity as well.

Passion fruit also boasts high vitamin B6 and vitamin B3 content, both of which regulate thyroid activity in our bodies. Regular consumption of this fruit is good for diabetics, good for your skin, nurtures your cardiovascular system, and also prevents osteoporosis.

So, if you are thinking of ordering some passion fruit, you are in store for some delicious treats and a plethora of health benefits.

Where Can I Order Passion Fruit?

This is a tricky question to answer. If you are located in a large city, finding a place at which to buy passion fruit directly or order in bulk is relatively easy. More rural areas are going to have a harder time landing their hands on some much-desired passion fruit.

These locales are going to have a far easier time ordering off of amazon or other online retailers. So, without further ado, what are the best places online and in person you can order some healthy passion fruit?

1. Amazon Grocery & Gourmet Food

Amazon Grocery & Gourmet Food

You can order nearly everything off of Amazon, but did you know you could order fresh fruits and vegetables as well? Passion Fruit is a common order off of Amazon due to the limited availability in local stores.

We went through the various sources Amazon pulls from and found this order had the universally best reviews. In this order, you get 8 fresh passion fruit for only 25 dollars. Shipping is free and takes a standard 2-3 business days to reach your home.

Ordering fresh fruit online often has its difficulties, however, especially when you order from a company as big as Amazon. Although all reviews seemed relatively glowing, one lamented the fact that they had two incredibly rotten fruits in their bunch. This is to be expected with fresh food orders, however, so keep this in mind.

Overall, a decent, relatively easy way to get your hands-on passion fruit if you don’t have the luxury of finding any locally.

2. Miami Fruit Passion Fruit Lilikoi Box

Miami Fruit Passion Fruit Lilikoi Box

If you are looking for something that is a little more personal than the large online tycoon that is Amazon, than Miami Fruit is a perfect alternative. They are a fruit farm based out of southern Florida. All of the fruit they sell is grown on their farm or neighborhood local farms. They grow, harvest, and package the fruit themselves.

You can order a wide variety of fresh fruit boxes from them. Their passion fruit box, or lilikoi box, comes in a varying selection of price and weights. Their sample box goes for 64 dollars and has about 3-6 pounds of fresh passion fruit.

You can choose between this size, a large box for 107 dollars, and extra-large box for 195 dollars, and bulk box for 315 dollars. If you are curious about passion fruit, we suggest going for the sample box, 3-6 pounds, if that’s more than enough to get you through that first stage of curiosity.

We would suggest getting the bulk box only if you run a confectionary or restaurant. Keeping that much fruit unspoiled in time to eat is nearly impossible unless you are preparing the food for a large group of people.

While this may seem more expensive, you get U.S. farmer-grown passion fruit that is grown sustainably. You are supporting small family agriculture, and that is always a plus. Furthermore, you know you are getting high quality fruit that is grown and cared for throughout its lifespan.

3. Local Harvest

Local Harvest

This is actually a pretty neat venture. Local Harvest is an online service that connects consumers with famers located in the area. Their mission is to help small farmers reach out to a broader clientele and to help foster the sustainable grocery market.

It also keeps customers in tune with what is produced seasonally, so you are more in touch with how and when local farmers make their money. They have over 30,000 family farms and local markets, including restaurants and grocery stores that feature locally grown food. It is pretty neat, and they also feature local farms that ship passion fruit.

At the time of writing this review, a majority of what they had in stock was out of stock due to the season of the passion fruit ending. Their prices are a little bit higher as well. For one 10-pound box, you end up paying 189 dollars. For a more reasonable 5-pound box you pay 110 dollars.

While it is more expensive, the quality of the fruit is hard to match, and you end up supporting a growing web of sustainable, local agriculture.

4. Fresh Direct Online Grocery Delivery

Fresh Direct Online Grocery Delivery

As the name implies, you can order nearly any consumable or grocery item you want from this online retailor. It specializes in delivering groceries to your door and has relatively good reviews online.

Because it specializes in delivery, you have a far lower risk of running into ruined perishables.Its passion fruit is affordable as well. They are guaranteed fresh at least 4 days from delivery, and you can get two for 6 dollars.

The only problem with this delivery service is the fact that they do not deliver nationwide. There are some areas or zip codes that they do not service, so make sure you are in the serviceable area before you place an order with Fresh Direct.

5. Whole Foods Market

Whole Foods Market

Whole Foods is a place where you can find passion fruit both online or in store. If you live in a larger urban area and have a local Whole Foods store, it will most likely be stocked with fresh passion fruit. If you do not, however, live near a Whole Foods Market, then you can place an order online through their store.

You get free delivery on your first order. You enter in your zip code to find a Whole Foods nearest you and they will ship it to your door. This might not be available to all rural locales. If your nearest Whole Foods is a decent distance away, you will have a hard time getting the market to deliver fresh produce.

If you do live somewhat near a Whole Foods, they are well known for procuring fresh, organic produce that is of high quality.

6. Melissa’s Fresh Produce

Melissa’s Fresh Produce

This is a fruits and vegetables warehouse based out of Los Angeles California. They specialize in delivering perishable, fresh produce to anywhere within the United States. Their passionfruit is grown in California or shipped in from New Zealand. They also let you know when the passion fruit season is so you are guaranteed to get the best of the best.

You can order a bunch of 8 at a time. The only inconvenience of Melissa’s is the availability of the product. At the time of writing this review, their passion fruit stock was entirely depleted and unavailable. This is due in part to the fruit’s seasonality.

It seems as if this company only sources from the best, which means it won’t stock passion fruit if the fruit is out of season and being forcibly grown in green houses. So, despite the lack of year-round availability, this is a great option for those looking to order some passion fruit.

7. Farmer’s Market Online

Farmer’s Market Online

Similar to Local Harvest, this online platform works to connect local farmers with a wider customer base. All of the produce bought and delivered is grown and packaged by farms located within the United States.

For passion fruit, all of the produce comes from farms in California. You have the option of choosing between regular passion fruit, golden passion fruit, and purple passion fruit. Upon further inspection, however, there is nothing truly unique about this platform.

They source their produce from the same, larger farms that Amazon uses, so you don’t get anything particularly unique from using Farmer’s market online, at least when it comes to passion fruit.

While the idea behind the platform is unique, you are better off going straight to Amazon and placing an order from there.

8. eBay

eBay

Like Amazon, eBay tends to source from larger, year-round farms, meaning you can place an order for passion fruit whatever time of the year you want. While this may seem convenient, the quality of the fruit will deteriorate the further out you get from its natural growing season.

It is priced relatively cheap compared to other online outlets in this article. For one 5-pound order you only have to pay 59-60 dollars. This isn’t bad considering some other options run you 110 dollars for the same amount of passion fruit.

Using eBay is similar to Amazon in that it is convenient and easy to ship no matter where you are located. It won’t be the most high-quality option on the market, however.

What To Look For When Ordering Passion Fruit

All in all, finding a good, reputable source to deliver passion fruit to your door year-round is difficult. While you can find services that will deliver passion fruit in the middle of winter, you will find these fruits to be of lower quality, and more easily perishable than those delivered during the growing season.

Ensuring high quality in this transaction is difficult. In order to make sure that you are ordering from the right place, always look at customer reviews. This is the number one way to ensure that what you are ordering is of the best quality.

Finding passion fruit in your local store is the best bet, as you can test the quality of the produce then and there. If you can’t, however, there are a plethora of good, reputable places online that deliver on their promise to ship high quality fruit right to your door.