I'm not opposed to dried fruit but BTC is slow for in person transactions.

That is entirely up to the seller, he can decide how much confirmations are necessary before processing your order. For something like dried fruit, I'd say zero confirmations would suffice. Just the appearance of the tx in the network is enough (plus not seeing other pending transactions from the same address beyond its current balance). Successfully pulling off a double spend would effectively cost way more than some dried fruit.