How to Make Beautiful DIY Fruit Platters for the Office

Wondering how to wow your colleagues at the next office extravaganza? Try using fresh fruit from your FruitGuys box (or the grocery store) to create memorable, enticing fruit platters. They’ll encourage healthy eating in the workplace, and you might even get your “fifteen minutes of fame.”

Jeanette Mendez, the production supervisor of The FruitGuys’ Chicago facility, loves cutting and arranging fruit at work to get everyone snacking. Her team needs to sample the fruit to make sure it’s delicious enough for customers, and she says the process might as well be fun. 

“When they spend 10–15 minutes taking pictures for their social media, I can tell my arrangements work,” she told us. “Just seeing people enjoy my fruit art brings me joy.” 

Creating fruit platters doesn’t take a lot of time, just the willingness to try. Here’s a quick guide to help you get started. 

Step 1: Choose the Right Fruit for Your Fruit Platters

First and foremost, ensure you use the freshest, most perfectly ripe fruit. No matter what’s on the tray, delicious fruit will be a hit. In–season fruit has the best flavor, and with fruit from The FruitGuys, quality and seasonality are givens. (To keep your fruit in the best possible condition, follow these recommendations for storage and ripening.)

According to San Francisco freelance caterer Jensen Zack, when it comes to choosing fruit, “Color plays a large role, partly because we connect the color of fruits to their ripeness. Fruits should be curated to create [a platter] that is flavorful, filling, visually appealing, seasonally appropriate, and texturally exciting. They should complement each other in taste (sweet, tart, acidic), and can be enhanced by other complimentary elements like honey, cheese, and chocolate.”

Watermelon slices, pomegranate arils, raspberries, cherries, and ripe strawberries can all add enticing shades of red. For blue and purple, think not only blueberries but also plums, figs, black grapes, blackberries, and boysenberries. Ripe, juicy mango slices add deep yellow, and papaya cubes bring rich orange.

Even a bit of striking color elevates a limited fruit selection. There may not be as much variety in your fruit mix from The FruitGuys in the winter and early spring as there would be in summer or fall, but you can dress up the navel oranges, pears, and kiwis with colorful red blood oranges or pink Cara Caras. Jeanette also recommends adding at least one “wow” fruit to your arrangement. Dragon fruit is a beautiful addition, with its pink skin, white or red interior, and tropical flavor. 

Curious about why apples and bananas aren’t on the list? Both oxidize quickly and turn an unappetizing brown. If you really want to include apple slices, slice them right before serving and keep the slices pressed together with the peel facing outward.

Step 2: Pick Your Platter Size and Serving Style

Ask yourself what type of event you’re creating the platter for. Do you want something showy or simple? How many people do you need to feed? Estimate one serving of fruit per person, or two if the platter is the main event. One serving is a cup of cut fruit, a piece roughly the size of your fist, or four large slices. 

Next, consider how you want people to eat the fruit. With their hands? With toothpicks? On paper cocktail plates? In cups? Knowing that can help you decide the optimal way to cut each item. Once you’ve nailed down the size and plan for your platter, it’s time to prepare your fruit. 

Step 3: Prepare Your Fruit

If you’re preparing your fruit platters at the office, make sure you have several sizes of paring knives and a cutting board on hand. The Food and Drug Administration (FDA) has recommendations for safely selecting and preparing produce. Following its tips for washing, cutting, and refrigerating fruit in advance can be a big timesaver. 

Cutting your fruit into fun shapes is a great way to jazz up your fruit platters. You can cut D’Anjou pear slices into hearts or stars. Cookie cutters also work well on slices of melon and pineapple for seasonal accents. (Here is a guide for cutting fresh pineapple.) Kiwis halved with zig–zag cuts, like the mountains in a kid’s drawing, become striking stars or flowers. Be sure to cut a bit off the bottom so they stand up. 

Cross–hatched mangos add visual texture, too. If you really want to level up your fruit platters, you can even carve oranges and other citrus into roses (see the bottom of this article for a how–to guide). There are hundreds of ideas online to help you expand your cutting repertoire.

Step 4: Have Fun With Presentation

Now it’s time for all of your work to pay off! There are endless ways to create exciting designs on your fruit platters. Experiment with scattering your fruit unevenly on the tray to create groupings of complementary items or separate similar colors and textures. Arrange slices into wavy rows for a time–saving yet alluring look, with sprinkled berries on top. Create an explosion of color using bright, bold fruit. Or try contrasting textures by pairing pomegranate arils with mango cubes. Let your imagination and sense of fun run wild. 

“I love to use floral imagery as inspiration for my plates, using pieces of fruit to create petals,” Zack told The FruitGuys, adding that skewered fruit also adds interest. 

For even more flavor variety, try integrating dips into your fruit platters. Vanilla yogurt and fresh fruit puree are two possibilities. Chocolate can turn the fruit into a decadent dessert. Maple syrup and sriracha? Why not.

Jeanette suggested adding foliage to the platter, such as citrus leaves. She likes to use every part of the fruit. You can also use a paring knife or potato peeler to cut off spirals of citrus peel for decoration. Leaving the skin on halved kiwis allows you to thinly pare the skin back and curl it down into petals. Springs of rosemary, lavender, or edible flowers are also perfect for special events, including work anniversaries or baby showers. 

As Jeanette shared, “It’s [all] about making the platter appealing to the eye. A work of art, if I may. But most important is to have fun with it.”

Orange Roses

Recipe by Jeanette Mendez for The FruitGuys

Here are simple, step–by–step directions for making your own roses from oranges, grapefruits, or other citrus. You’ll need a small, sharp knife and a cutting board. Carving one of these citrus roses will add a special touch to your fruit platters. The roses are quick to make after a little practice, and the fruit is easy to eat.

Ingredients

• 1 orange, grapefruit, or other round citrus

Preparation

1. On the cutting board, cut the orange in half. 
2. Slice the rounded ends off of each half and set them aside.
3. Cut the orange flesh carefully out of each half, keeping the peel intact.
4. Remove both rounds of orange flesh from their peels.
5. Add the two rings of peel to your fruit platter where you want your final roses to rest.
6. Place the rounded ends that you removed in step two into the rings of peel, cut side down. 
7. Slice the rounds of orange flesh that you removed in step four in half. 
8. Slice the halves into thin petals and gently place the petals into each ring of peel. Place bigger petals near the peel and thinner ones toward the middle.
9. Sit back and admire your work! 

Makes two roses. Prep time, 3 minutes.