 This is State Tech Hawaii, Community Matters here. Ed, welcome to the Hawaii Food and Farmers series. I am your solo host today, Justine Espiritu. I'm happy to be here. I haven't been here in a while. As a reminder, every other week, myself or Matt Johnson or Stephanie bring on local farmers, restaurants, different companies that are working on local food and have local products to sell and that they're developing here and we're this big network of folks kind of growing food and products and helping each other out. And so we always like to bring folks on and get their back story and hear about what they're doing, how it's unique to Hawaii and who they're collaborating with and what they're learning. So today we have a special guest. Her name is Donna Hayes. She is with the Kauai Coffee Company and she is the business area manager. Thank you so much for joining me today. Thank you so much for having me. I'm so happy to be here. I really think you are the first coffee company that we've had on, which is interesting. Coffee seems to be such a relevant crop here in Hawaii. So maybe if you could give me a little bit of background about coffee in Hawaii briefly and then kind of get into Kauai Coffee Company. Yeah, absolutely. Well, you know, coffee in Hawaii is really just world famous. Everybody is very familiar with Kona and then Ka'u recently followed suit. It's kind of making itself on the map. But Hawaiian coffee has long been known as, you know, premium quality. We've got that, you know, rich volcanic soil that is high and minerals and nutrients for the coffee. So it's really just a perfect place for this crop. It's also a perfect place for a lot of crops. And we actually didn't start out as a coffee farm. In about the turn of the century, the late 1800s, sugar was starting to be planted on the island. And, you know, a lot of the immigrant workers who like migrated here started working on the sugar fields. A lot of those were on Kauai at the McBride sugar plantation. And it's right on the southwest side of Kauai. And so we started out as McBride sugar plantation. And then over the years, a lot of agricultural diversification was taking place. As I'm sure you know, just last year the last sugar farm on Maui just closed. And just kind of diversified into different crops, you know, all the sugar farms over the years. So in the 80s, they started playing around on McBride with coffee. And then in 1987, Kauai coffee was officially born. So we've been around, we've been growing coffee since then. With a little hiatus when Hurricane Iniki hit the island in 92, of course we all know really devastating event for the island. And it really wiped out a lot of our crop and we had to start from scratch. Coffee trees takes five or six years to mature once you start planting. So once we started fresh, about by 1998, we were back in full force. And at that time we built our current visitor center. So any guest tourists can come visit the island, check out our visitor center, do kind of a self-guided tour thing. So that happened with that renovation after the hurricane? Exactly, exactly. So that was the 90s? Yeah, 98 was when we really re-established, built the visitor center, and became what we are today. So there have been a lot of changes since then. We're always trying to move onward and upward. And about six years ago we got acquired by a company named Massimo Zanetti Beverage. They're an Italian company, but their US headquarters is based on the East Coast. And they manage a lot of brands that you might have heard of, like Hill Brothers, Cigafrito, Chuck Fullenut. And they took on Kauai coffee. And it's been a really amazing, amazing ride with them They've had a lot of resources to help modernize our equipment and help with some financial things with regards to marketing and roasting operations. So did that really amp up production then? I would say what it did was it amped up quality. So it's just been, we've been working to get ourselves on the map as a well, high quality, and just really have people know what Kauai coffee is. A lot of people know about Kona. They're starting to know about Ka'u. And we want to be right up there with them. Ka'u is also on the Big Island. And they're kind of more on the south side of the Big Island. So in addition to that, our general manager, Fred Cowell, who's been with us for a couple of years now, and he's a second generation Kona farmer. So it's pretty cool because we're a large farm. We're 3,100 acres, which is about five miles by three miles. And that's the largest farm in Hawaii. It is. In the US. Exactly. And Fred came from Kona, and it's been really cool since he's been on board because he's been able to bring small farming practices where their focus is really on quality and bring that to a large-scale operation like ours. Okay, so what does that mean? What's that difference of, or what's something kind of specific of like a small practice or small farm practice that you guys have been able to, yeah, because I always kind of hear that. Like if you go big, then you kind of lose that quality or those kind of things. So just something specific to coffee. Well, I think I would say many larger farms in general are really just focusing on quantity and output and stuff like that. But we're really trying to make an effort and looking at soil quality. And what can we do to make that better across the board or in segments of our farm to really bring up the quality so that when that gets produced and milled and roasted, then it's just a higher quality cup. So it's just really start to finish from the growth stage all the way to when you have that cup of coffee. Okay, and we'll get kind of more into that specific stuff in the next segment. But I want to hear more about what other things are like unique to your guys' farm. And I imagine since Hawaii's so, it's great to grow coffee here. Is it kind of like over-saturated with people growing coffee? Or can you kind of explain that and how you guys distinguish? If people are sourcing from other places, where you guys kind of stand on that or what it looks like quite good. Sure. I mean, it's really a mixed bag as far as Hawaiian coffee goes. There are, I mean, the thing about Hawaiian coffee is, you know, we live in a really expensive place in the world. Our, you know, cost of land is high, cost of labor is high. We can't compete necessarily in price with a lot of the Columbians and, you know, Vietnam and Brazil. These are all other coffee origins in the world. So Hawaii is a very expensive place to grow coffee. So what you see, it is the best. And that's the thing we got to play on quality. And with, like Kona, for example, a lot of the farms are smaller farms and they can't produce anything on scale. Amazing coffee but small batch. And a lot of producers will source from different Kona farms and, you know, make their batch of coffee from a variety of farms. Okay, so it's almost like those small farms, they're just doing that production to kind of sell to other people to make the final product and market it. It depends on the company. I can't really speak to that. You know, some sell their own, some sell to producers who will roast it on themselves. So a lot of Kona that you'll see on the shelf too because it is a little more expensive for Kona origin is you'll see a lot of blends on the shelf. So you see the 10% blend. So you have 10% Kona coffee in there and then 90% some other origin. So what's really cool about our company, I think, is that because of our scale, we are able to find efficiencies and compete on price and be much less than 100% Kona and our product is 100% Kauai coffee right from our state, single origin coffee. And we are at a much more approachable price point for a bag of coffee versus 100% Kona. So then you don't mix because everything you said is from your farm. Correct. Yeah, everything single origin right on our state. Start to finish. Our state or the farm? Our estate. Our estate in the state. Sorry. So yeah, I mean, it's start to finish. The coffee is grown there in the coffee trees and then brought right to our mill for the wet milling and then the dry milling and then our roast plants right there, our packaging right there. So start to finish this bag of coffee here. It was born on our farm and packaged on our farm. So it's pretty cool. I would say one of, if not the closest brand you could find on the island, where it's just a direct link to the farm. Yeah, since you guys made that transition since the infrastructure was there for sugar, is that what allowed this to be a location that you could do that whole production cycle on site? Or did it still need to expand bigger to kind of incorporate everything? We are, we're on the same land that the sugar was on. Same size, all that. Same, I'll have to check on that. I'm not exactly sure. Don't lie to me. But it was, it's approximately the same size. And then of course we had to do some modifications to the factory and things like that to be able to process coffee instead of sugar. So are there any like super distinct or unique flavors you guys have, or like your, this is our best coffee, get this one. Oh gosh. Like what other flavors we have here? Well, so here, so these are the bags that you can find in our retail stores. We've got our medium roast, which is our best seller. We've also got a dark roast, and then I brought two of our better selling flavors, the vanilla mac nut and the coconut caramel crunch. So a lot of coffee purists, like either medium or dark roast. And then the interesting thing about our flavored coffees is they are all natural. So we don't have any artificial flavors. So where are you getting that stuff from? We're sourcing that from a company in the U.S. Okay. Yeah. Not on Hawaii? Not on Hawaii. Everything's not from Hawaii. Okay, we won't talk about that. Yeah. Okay. Yeah, but we've got a lot. We make a really nice pea berry. And the pea berry is a real special bean. It's kind of like a freak of nature bean. We only get it in about 2% of our crop. And it's one bean in a pod versus the normal two in a coffee bean. And it really has really bright, you know, more bolder flavors. And we can do something like that on a large scale where smaller coffee farms don't get enough pea berry to be able to provide to customers. And so is that something that's in just one of these normal blends or that becomes its own special variety? It becomes its own special variety. Okay. So you guys have like some seasonal stuff. Yeah. Well, actually we do a lot of specific blends or flavors, blends meaning blends from the variety of coffee that we grow in our state that are really kind of like a state premium estate grown coffee. And you can only find them at the visitor center or online on KauaiCoffee.com. So we do some special stuff, you know, for the customers that come in and have a chance to see the farm and check out our special varieties. That's cool. I want to hear a little more about that. It's cool to hear that you guys kind of built that visitor center in the 90s. And I feel like recently the whole like agrotourism thing has really increased especially for small farmers that kind of need to have something else going on on the farm. So can you kind of talk about some of those different ways you guys bring in the community or kind of what you expose them to there? Are you guys taking like tours to the coffee farm or is it all just tasting or how do you guys kind of shape that? Yeah. All of the above actually. So we do have our visitor center which is open to the public and so you can come on your own or as part of a tour we get, you know, when the cruise ships come into the island we get a lot of cruise tours come through. But it's a great way to spend a couple hours or half a day when you're on Kauai. The visitor center has this really cool deck where we've got about 30 or so different varieties of coffees that we make. You know, I mentioned that we do some special stuff there. For retail, you know, you can only find between four and six varieties. We have like 30 plus that we make and that you can find on our visitor center. And so you can sample for free all of these coffees that we make and just, you know, get your caffeine fix there. We also have a self-guided tour that you can kind of browse through the coffee trees and there's lots of, you know, informative pieces that, you know, educate about coffee. We also do guided tours too. So it's let them run wild. Yeah, let them run wild. So if you don't want to run wild, we do have guided tours where it gets a little bit more in depth in the history of coffee and the history of our farm and how coffee is made, et cetera. And then so, yeah, it's a pretty cool place to visit. And we also do some outreach across the island. One of our employees actually goes and just samples coffee to visitors and locals all over the world. Well, no, this is another one. I can't be everywhere. But yeah, she's out on Kauai talking about Kauai coffee and why it's awesome and bringing more people to the farm. Cool, awesome. We're going to take a quick one-minute break and learn a little bit more. All right, thanks. Aloha, I'm Richard Concepcion, the host of Hispanic Hawaii. You can watch my show every other Tuesday at 2 p.m. We will bring you entertainment, educational, and also we'll tell you what is happening right here within our community. Think Tech, Hawaii, Aloha. You can be the greatest You can be the best You can be the king Come bangin' on your chest You can be, you can talk to God Go bangin' on his door I am Justine Espiritu. My guest today is famous Donna Hayes with Kauai Coffee Company. She was just giving me kind of the background of Kauai Coffee Company and I kind of grilled her in coffee history in general so thank you for all that knowledge. My pleasure. So you already kind of touched on your focus on soil quality. So I kind of want to hear more about that and how you guys kind of sustain that and your kind of sustainability initiatives in general if you kind of talk about that stuff. Yeah, absolutely. We're doing some pretty cool things on the farm as it relates to sustainability and I think it's one of our focuses. We want to try our best to do, you know, put our best foot forward and do what we can to help the environment minimize impacts and all that. So we're doing a variety of things. The first is that we have a drip irrigation system to feed and water our coffee trees. We actually have the... As opposed to... Well, so drip irrigation is special because we've got tubing that is right along each tree and we've got... It's like 2,500 miles of these drip irrigation tubes and what it does is it applies the water and the fertilizer directly to the root of each tree and, you know, if you have like a sprinkler going or something like that you've got a lot of extra water in the soil and the air so we're really focusing on applying that water fertilizer exactly where it's needed and no more. Nothing else, you know, added to the environment other than right there at the root of the tree where it's needed. So that's helping to minimize water use and, you know, fertilizer, you know, less stuff in the environment. So we also have a composting program on the farm and this is pretty cool. We've got seven acres now. It's going to probably expand to about 10 acres where we actually compost... This is what we have up here now. Oh, yes, this is... Yeah, this is our compost area. Yes, exactly that. So all of the coffee cherry pulp and that's kind of the outer layer of that coffee fruit that gets discarded during the milling process to get to the final bean. All of that gets thrown into the compost pile as well as, you know, the trimmings and stuff like that and, you know, when it's ready we put it right back into the soil and it's super-nutritive for the trees so that's something cool that we're doing. And how much space does that take enough on the... Right, it's about seven acres. Oh, wow. Yeah. And it's crazy, you go out there and you feel like you're on Mars or something. It's just really, really cool. And, yeah, you stick your arm in and it's like so hot, you know, so what they've got, they're turning them and getting them all prepared. I know you guys use cover crops. How much of your land growing? Okay. Okay. Cover crops, sorry. We are working. What are you guys using and how much area? Yeah, absolutely. So we are in the process of planting. The goal is to get the whole farm planted. You know, we're kind of in the starting phase and we've got like 18 acres that are unplanted right now that we're starting fresh with the cover crop and then we just planted the coffee trees. So that's kind of in a pre-organic state right now because it's kind of set up to maybe potentially test some organic things in the future. But we are... We've got, gosh, daikon is one. And we've got like some huge daikon just planted right in the midst of the coffee trees. Oh, that's awesome. It's an intercropping stuff. And it's a natural weed deterrent. So it reduces the need for herbicides and things like that when you've got the cover crops because it's keeping the weeds away. And then it's, of course, shading the soil to help reduce evaporation of water and, of course, providing added nitrogen into the soil. So it's this really beautiful symbiotic relationship that's going on. The goal is to plant as much as possible. I can't speak to exactly how much is currently being planted. I won't ask. I won't ask. What do you mean with that daikon? Well, we love to... You get to pick it out. Oh, we do. You get to pick it out. It's over there. It's over there. Well, you know, we'll pick a couple here and there when we've got people that were showing the farm and what we're doing. But essentially, it stays in the soil and as it decomposes, that's where that really nitrogen rich property gets added back into the coffee trees. Okay. I'm going to be right there. Well, after we can... There's more that you want to say on that. But I also kind of want to know your role and kind of like, yeah, what you're doing with the farm and do you talk a little bit about that? What I'm doing with the farm, well, I'm by no means a farmer, but I work very closely hand in hand with all of the team from the farm operations to the roast plant and, you know, I'm responsible for the retail sales for Hawaii and what happens on the farm is very important because that will impact what happens in the bags of coffee that I sell. Yeah, and so you really get to have that hands-on experience or really get in there and are seeing how the farmers are doing things so then you can kind of bring that back when you're kind of selling the product. Exactly, exactly. Give that personal experience and see what's going on. Yeah, and I think what's really cool about the company is our story. It is our sustainability efforts. It is, you know, that we are, you know, this operation on Kauai that's providing jobs for, you know, we're one of the bigger employers on the island. Can I ask you how many employees? Yeah, so we've got, I think it's about 80 full-time and another 120 or so supplemental that come in for the harvest and help is needed kind of thing. So I'd say, you know, 200 total including some of the part-timers and one on Oahu, if that's me. So, but yeah, I mean, I work very closely with the farm because what happens with the crop, if we're going to have a really good year or a really bad year, that's going to impact our cost and stuff like that. I work very closely with our roast master because as far as product goes, you know, we need to be hand in hand on forecasting, on making sure that I'm getting him what he needs to roast the right stuff for my customers. So, yeah, it's pretty cool to be working so closely with all different aspects of the operation and it's unlike really any other position that I've had before. Yeah. So bringing up the roast master, there's something we talked about, cupping, which is another thing that's kind of specific to making sure you have like a good quality coffee product. So could you talk a little bit about that? Yeah. So a coffee cupping is essentially, it's an assessment, it's a sensory assessment of the coffee and, you know, you analyze the aromas and the flavors and the body and the structure and you can, you know, really identify nuances, if there's flaws, you know, and really kind of just get an idea. And it's like in a lab or this is just, I mean, this is in a lab. This is absolutely in a lab. Oh, okay, okay. So, yeah, if you think about, you know, in the wine world, I came from wine, you know, you get the Somalia and they're, you know, doing exactly that. So, not exactly, but similar. And we actually, so our roast master is what they call a licensed Q grader. So he has the highest certification to be able to identify what's going on in this coffee. So he's just, you know, really closely watching throughout the production process, what's going on with the coffee. And as far as quality control goes, they perform cuppings at least three times throughout the production process to monitor, you know, what those beans are like, what we can expect from that coffee. Because it all gets graded by the USDA at the end of it and it behooves us to make sure we've got the quality and the consistency. So, yeah, there's a definite we closely watch the quality and monitor that all throughout the process. And then that's happening on site. On site. And that's something that's probably unique to us because other farms aren't really working at our scale, so they're not really equipped to do that. And so that's one thing that we're doing to make sure that we've got that consistency over time. And so I want to kind of ask about other kind of trends you guys see in the coffee industry. Is this kind of like the plateau of we have these products or these flavors and we have these crops we're growing? Or what do you kind of see of what kind of new initiatives are there to do in coffee? Okay, that's a good question. I think, you know, I hope this isn't it. I think we've got a lot of potential and as far as, you know, since I've been onboard I think we've only scratched the surface and there's so many directions we can take it. Where Hawaii plays in the coffee business, we really need to play on quality because as I mentioned before we can't produce a cheap bag of coffee because of the labor because of the cost of the land so we can't compete with, you know, some of those other coffees that you find on the shelf on a lower price point. So it's important for us to educate the customer on why this is a better product and, you know, really what's in their bag and that's important to, you know, millennials for example are one of our, you know, big customer base in the market and they want to know the story. They want to know, you know, what is the origin, what's the story and, you know, where's it coming from and am I putting my money to a good cause. So really, for us it's really to continue to play on the quality and go from there. Gosh, as far as trends in the market I would say, you know, single serves are still doing really well. You know, the K-Cups, the single serve machines. We actually do make a single serve but it's not like a K-Cup. It has kind of like a mesh screen underneath it. So people in, you know, your world, I know it's like single serve, so much plastic and I think, gosh, I heard the, what is the latest quote was I think the K-Cup waste, I think can now wrap around the world like 11 times annually. It's crazy. Stop it. So I know. But we, we do make a K-Cup. It's not a K-Cup. We make a single serve pod and there's much less plastic being used in ours. So if you're, if you're looking for the convenience aspect, like, yeah, yeah, I know. That's the thing. It's like some people just want the convenience and there's a customer for that. So, you know, let's make it as good for the world as we can while still catering to their needs. And cold brew. Cold brew is coming. I wish I could hear more about that. But we're actually out of time. Thank you so much for coming on and joining us today. Thank you. And giving us the story of Kauai Coffee Company. Absolutely. Thanks a lot. Thanks.