 Welcome to Connecting Hawaii Business on Think Tech Hawaii. My name is Kathleen Lee, owner of Kathleen Lee Consulting, and I am your host for this program. Think Tech Hawaii is currently live streamed on ThinkTechHawaii.com as well as on Think Tech Hawaii's Facebook and YouTube channel. And for viewers out there you may ask us questions during the show by emailing them to questions at ThinkTechHawaii.com. Now that we've gotten that intro out of the way, I am excited that we're turning up the heat in today's show by having the owners of Maui Chili Chili Oil on our show. So it's Chili Chili in Hawaii with Kit and Darren Furukawa. Kit and Darren, welcome to Connecting Hawaii Business. Hello, hello. Hi, thank you for having us. We're excited to be here. I'm excited that you guys are here. So let's tell our viewers about your cells. Kit, let's start with you. Well, my background is government, actually. I've had years working for the county and then nonprofit. So yeah, I'm from the Philippines. I'm Filipino. I moved to Hawaii, now living on Maui. And you can say I'm a serial entrepreneur. I opened an escape room in 2018 after years of working for the government and just decided, why not give it a try? So now diving into this whole business world with my husband now, Darren. Hey, your husband, Darren. So Darren, let's go through your intro. Tell our viewers about yourself. Well, I like to eat, which is why we're here. But I come from a construction background. So I was a construction painter for many years. I took the full leap this summer to do this chili oil business and to help my wife with her escape rooms. This is really busy. So I'm following in her entrepreneurial footsteps as I'm learning and I'm learning a lot on the way along the way. That's wonderful. I actually almost forgot that you guys had an escape room. So let's have that on another show. And I got to Maui. But focusing back on Maui chili chili oil, why is it Maui chili chili? Why is it named twice? I love how you guys had to name it twice. But you know, let us hear it from you. How did you come up with the name? We had some names when we were thinking about a name like Maui Nuka oil or something like that. Or crunchy oil. But you know, we just wanted to make it generic, but at the same time kind of witty. So you know, we were coming up with names and I'm like, let's just repeat the chili because it's chili chili. And it's so good. So good. So let's name it twice. And that's how we came about it. And then it's just kind of stuck. It's stuck forever. And that's it. I like it, though. It's catchy. So let's pull up the first graphic. And let's ask you guys, what made you decide on chili oil out of all the many things and the many condiments out there? Why chili oil? Okay, it all started because during Christmas, I like to give my close family and friends gifts of food. So you know, everybody does, you know, like salsa, everybody does chili, pepper, water or something. So I just decided to try something new. And cookies. Yeah. But the chili oil was just something different. You know, we don't have anything like that on Maui. We have like a Japanese version here, but not the Chinese version, which is the style that we make. Very Chinese inspired. So we just tweaked the recipe, sent it to friends and it caught on. So here we are selling it now. Yeah, it was a fun process. Definitely a fun process. Still process today. Not done yet. Still learning a lot. The photo that we had earlier was one of the prototypes that we had when we were experimenting on the product. So that didn't work out because it was a disaster. And it got oil all over the place. So we're like, oh, no, this is not the bottle for us. And so we just kind of tweaked it and tweaked it until, you know, we found the right formula for it. But yeah, we do everything from bottling to labeling. This was at the height of the pandemic, if you want to talk about that there. And yeah, like last year, actually about a year ago, when we were experimenting in our living room. Yeah. As you can imagine, a lot of people have been cooking at home, especially us, you know, trying to save money, trying to make ends meet. And, you know, why not just try to make our own own condiment? And, you know, when I came across this recipe, we were looking in the stores all over for it, but we couldn't find any. So we had to end up ordering online, all these different types of Szechuan style chili oils. And, you know, we just wanted to know what was what the standard was. And we couldn't find anything that we really, really liked as far as already prepackaged stuff. So I tweaked the recipe even more and came up with our own, I guess, our own recipe. Which is really simple, but, you know, it's a process. It's very high-consuming and labor-intensive. Okay, let's pull up a second graphic. Since you mentioned that, so you guys do everything from like staring and packaging and all that? This is from our little apartment. So there's our TV in the background. You know, this was like last year. We're just testing recipes. And this became the bottle that we're using now. So this turned out really good. This bottle, this hexagon bottle, it's really sturdy and good quality. But yeah, we just wanted to share this that, you know, it's a really small operation business, just me and my husband right now. But yeah, we hope to see it grow, but it starts small. We, like anybody else, would have to start at home because, you know, we didn't have a kitchen back then. We didn't have, we didn't have the direction. So we had to just start somewhere, which was with the recipe. And because the recipe turned out as good as, you know, you wanted it to, we just from there, we took off and tried to figure out how we can market and how we can get this on the market. But that's another learning process. That's great that you guys are doing everything. And I'm guessing that you've learned a lot through this process since you're going through it from like, you know, production to distribution. So let's pull up the third and fourth graphic. And while we're doing that, can you tell us about what it's like working together as a couple in building this business? Well, we have a really good, we have really good communication. We sometimes, sometimes maybe we don't see eye to eye, but you know, we always come to, I guess, an agreement or like a compromise in doing things. I always think I'm right. And I'm never always right. And Kit is most of the time always right. So I have to give her grief until I realize, oh, she's right. Okay, let's do it your way then. But that's just the kind of the relationship that we have. It sounds like we're fighting all the time and we're not. We're just, you know, just trying to be the boss and, you know, we all know who the boss is. I think it helps, you know, for a first startup, or, you know, if you have a partner to bounce ideas with the beginning phase, there were times that, you know, I was throwing the towel, I was like giving up no energy and then there and would be the enthusiastic one. And then there are times that would switch that there and would be like, really grouchy and, you know, I don't want to give up. And then I would be like, no, let's do it. Let's do it. Let's give him a call. Let's try it. So I think that's part of the process in the startup. So whether it be your best friend or, you know, a relative or someone you trust, I think it helps to have a partner if you would like to get into, you know, a business as well. But yeah, the photos that you're seeing here is just some behind the scenes. We converted this little room into our fulfillment center now. You see all the boxes. And this is there and cooking in the kitchen. So we were able to hire, I mean, rent a commercial kitchen to actually do our product. He doesn't look very happy in there, I think because he's, you know, That's my zen look. That's what I'm stirring and I don't want to burn anything. And I don't want to burn my face look, which has happened by the way. I mean, not burn the face, but we have burned several batches, you know, just trial and error. Like it exploded. Like when we added certain products and we weren't monitoring the temperature. So there were times that was pretty, pretty intense, pretty crazy, but it was good fun, good fun learning. So you can imagine that we're not classically trained chefs. We haven't gone to culinary school, but we did a lot, a lot of trial and error, more, a lot of error actually. So you can taste it in our product, how much we grew as far as learning how to make our product and how, how I guess, you know, how much time we actually put into making the product. So it's not something we just put together. Okay, let's try and sell it real fast and make plenty of money. No, no, no, no, we have to start slow, start, you know, start from somewhere and then just grow. So, you know, and we're still growing, we start growing with recipes, we have some recipes in our head that we want to try later on. But right now it's all about kind of juggle everything from production to, to ordering to mailing out and your marketing, this is whole everything. That's, it's really, really fun. Speaking of trial and error, it's approximately how many times did you guys experiment with the ingredients before you were like, huh, this is, this is what we're going to bottle? Maybe like four or five times. Well, yeah, with the small recipes, of course, it was maybe like, yeah, around four times. And then as the recipes got bigger, you know, as far as making more bottles and more bottles, you had to adjust some, some of the measurements. So over six times, we had to go through this process. And we lost a couple of our batches, which was kind of devastating. But, you know, that's just how it goes. So we just kind of like, just pick ourselves up and move on. Yeah, Darren is very OC in a sense that he only wants to put the quality products out there. So it would really go through a test phase before we put it on the shelves, you know, getting, getting the approval of some friends and family as well. It's important for us. So we have a close knit group that we give our product to and have them test it and taste it and give us really constructive feedback. This is hotter, you know, I like the heat in this one, maybe this one needs a little bit more dis. So it was a good process, you know, focus grouping the product. Yeah, so maybe like three times of making the product before we actually sent it out to like family and friends, we wanted to make sure that we liked it first before we gave it to like, hey, here, they're going to say something about it, you know, I don't want to fail. I want them to be, oh, I like it right away kind of thing. So, you know, it was really meticulous on everything. And yeah, it went well. Well, no, actually, you folks make me wish I lived on Maui and your neighbor. So I could be like, oh, I can meet for you. Let me come over. But earlier before the show, you guys mentioned that there are three different spice levels currently, did I get that right? Correct. So we have an original medium and a spicy kind spicy. So the original is really like mild. You can taste the heat, a little bit of a heat from the chilies itself from the Szechuan chili flakes. But it's nothing overwhelming. The medium is a step up above the original, something where, you know, you don't want to really commit to the heat, but still you want that little bit of tingle and yeah, it kind of just stimulates the the palate. And then we have a spicy kind of spicy that creeps up on you. You don't even know it's hot. And then you start sweating and it's like, oh, yeah, it's just pretty hot. But you know, at the same time, you can taste your food and it's this enhances everything. So yeah, it's it's three distinct heat levels, but you know, still very, very, very tasty. You can still taste the product and your food. I love that you guys are offering options for individuals to choose what spice level works for them. So we are going to go on a short break. But when we come back, we'll be talking more with Kit and Darren about Maui chili chili oil, as well as challenges that they may have faced during the pandemic, and where to find the product. So we will be right back to connecting Hawaii business. Our guests for today are Kit and Darren Furukawa, owners of Maui chili chili oil. So when we left off, they were talking about the three different spice levels of their product. Let's pull up the video and Kit or Darren, walk us through what we're seeing here once it pulls up, just so people have an idea of the process. Yeah, it's just a quick video. So we sterilize the bottles, we cook the onions and garlic ourselves. Darren does this process. It's very fragrant where we where we do the cooking in the kitchen. We use canola oil, we do the assembling of the different products, and this is the actual chili oil that there is cooking in the fusion process. And yeah, so we assemble all the products in the kitchen. This is us pouring the oil in individual bottles. And when it's ready, and this is how it looks when you open it, you can use it as a condiment for cooking, for your salad, for anything. This is the heat seal. We do this here in the office now and just putting labels on it. So it's manual work, really. These are just videos on how you can use chili oil. You can use it as a sauce. We add a little bit of citrus in there, and a little bit of shoyu. You know you can use it as a sauce for your dumplings. This one we're going to use gyoza. The next one I'll have Darren explain. That's his favorite, his poki dish. Yeah, so you put a little bit of ahi. You put natto in there. You don't have to put natto if you don't like natto, which is the fermented soybeans. And you add a little bit of the chili chili oil, whatever spice level you want. It goes good with any heat level. I put a little bit or a lot. Just mix it up, and voila, you have your dish. And then you can put it over rice. You can eat it. Here we have it. I was putting it over sushi rice. So a little bit of vinegar in the rice. And yeah, topping it off right there. So yeah, we use it for all kinds of all kinds of dishes. Very versatile chili oil, dipping sauces, adding after, adding before, adding during your meal. It goes well mixed with other stuff like shoyu because our product is a low sodium. You can add your own sodium to make it more salty according to your taste. So you're not, you know, you can have a choice of how salty you want to make it. But yeah, it's very good. We recommend it, recommend it to everybody. How we use it often too for us is for our late night, midnight ramen, you know, when you cook up ramen from Costco, we just add it in ramen or breakfast on eggs, you know, when you have like your eggs and bacon, add a little bit of chili oil in the rice and it just totally elevates the dish and makes it really fragrant. But that was like a preview of the process, you know, getting to that part. There's a story behind, you know, there's a whole permitting process that we needed to go through. And that's something we can share with you as well. Yeah, go for it. I'm watching like, during the video, I was thinking, why is this not a live show? I wanted to mention also, because the poke with chili oil was popular for friends and family, one of the local grocery stores here actually adopted it. So there and you want to talk about poke soup? Yes, if you go up to Pokolani Super Red, they actually have a poke that's called Maui chili chili oil poke. It's just ahi and onions and then they mix the chili chili oil in it. So they have it in little containers at their store available for purchase. It's really, really good. I tried. There's also another store called Mana Foods in Paella that uses our chili chili oil in one of their stir fried dishes. So they have a Thai chicken stir fried that they use the chili chili oil and they order, you know, the bulk and mix it in their foods and and offer that hot dish to the public. So we're really happy that people are actually using, you know, using it to cook with them and as opposed to just using it as a personal stash and stuff. So yeah, thank you. I love that. Okay, go over and I was going to segue into this anyway. What are some of the challenges that you guys have faced? So you talked about permitting and we can go over how COVID has had or has affected the business as well. So let's go over the permitting stuff that you were touching upon earlier. So yeah, so getting the green placard was a process, you know. It's a daunting process if if you don't have the right mindset for it. That's how I would describe it. It's a long process and for a reason, you know, we want to make sure that the product is safe and it's ready for the public. So it's a few requirements, a checklist that business owners have to go through. But it's nothing, nothing impossible. It's just like applying for college, you know, you have different steps that you need to go through. That took us a little while also because of limited hours, I would assume for the review. But we went through it and just go over the steps one step at a time and just don't give up. You know, if you're considering going into this business, ask around, ask for help. We were able to ask some friends who are already in the business how they went through the process. And yeah, just don't give up. Yeah, always ask for help. Even a lot of it was dealing with the Department of Health in Hawaii. So we had to, there's a long correspondence of one of the inspectors of the kitchen that I was using. The process, he would not give answers because, you know, he want me to learn the process inside and out. I don't get anybody sick. But at the same time, he's very helpful in his, you know, he responds right away. He asks him questions. It doesn't sound like he waits two weeks to respond here. He responds in an hour or whatever. And, you know, it made the process a lot easier. Just the learning part was this hard for me. You know, it's like going to school all over again because I had to do my due diligence. Make sure everything is kosher because I didn't have the training too. So I didn't know where to start and everything just kind of fell into place after a while. I said, oh, okay, I catch on now. And then the inspector realized, oh, yeah, yeah, he knows what he's doing. So that's that. But another thing about the pandemic, especially now everybody would notice would be the supply chain issues. Oh my gosh, like we've run out of certain ingredients a couple of times and we had to halt production, which kind of gave me a lot of anxiety because, you know, we have orders to fulfill and we want to get stuff out in the markets when we do like a little pop-up markets and everything. But running out of product is always a fear of mine. We do order, we do buy some stuff from Costco and going into Costco's like a gamble nowadays, you go in there and they don't have a certain product like, oh my God, what am I going to do now? So yeah, just keeping on top of the ordering is kind of daunting, but, you know, totally doable as long as you have many avenues that you can try and get your supplies from them. We have a few minutes left on the show. So while we wrap up, could you go over some of the lessons that you've learned during this process? Yeah, there can go first. Yeah, go ahead. You have to, well, we, I learned that I have to really like doing this, you know, we really love to eat. So, you know, that's really helps. But, you know, making the chili oil is something that we have to like commit to. Obviously, I stopped painting so I can do this full time because it's something I really, really like. And you have to, I'm at a loss for us. Go ahead, get. So I was going to add to that, making the product really good. So I think if you have a good product that you believe in, it's easy to market it. And your friends and family will support you all the way. So really perfecting your craft and believing in what you offer. I think it's very important. In addition to a good product, having the right attitude to get into business is important as well. You know, having the right mindset that, you know, it's not going to be cherry every day, you're going to have ups and downs, but it's not giving up, asking for help if you need it, taking breaks for yourself and eating, making sure that you sleep. But yeah, you get really passionate with your work, but finding some balance also with your personal life would be good. But yeah, having a good attitude towards business, believing in your product, offering a really good product, those are some lessons that I guess we can share with the audience. There's a great lesson. Go ahead, Darren. I thought I would learn more about it during my process, but, you know, she's still the same, very supportive. Even though I want to give up, she'd be there telling me to, you know, just push through. He says nice things because he cooks for me, so I let him. I eat all his food. You guys are awareness. Okay, let's pull up the fifth photo that we have. Where can people find you, folks? Where can people find Maui cherry oil? We're located in a different country. We're at Pukulani Super Red Mana Foods in town. You can find us at Island Grocery Depot, at TJ's Tamuras, and Wailluku Kihei, and Lahaina, CAA Marketplace, and at Four Sisters Bakery. We're actually at a bakery, and we're going to be featured at the Hui Noyao Visual Arts Center in Makawau. They're going to have us as their Christmas, one of their items for their Christmas gifts from November 19th to the 24th of December. So a whole bunch of places, you know, and we're working on getting into more stores, but for now, you know, that's what we have. And upcoming this December is the reboot of Maiden Maui County Festival. You know, it was online the past weeks. There was a crash on the website, so the organizers decided to have a live in-person event in addition to the online. So we're going to be participating with that December 4th. I'm pretty sure there's going to be marketing out in the community and on social media for that, but we're excited to feature Maui Chili Chili Oil and get it out more in the community. So it's going to be a more sleepless night. Yay! Let's pull up the website so people can find you online. What is your website and your contact info? Yeah, MauiChiliChiliOil.com. So we ship anywhere in mainland US, Alaska to New York. So it's actually pretty exciting every time we get an order from like an unknown town that, oh, where is this from? We have shipped also abroad to Canada and Japan, though we haven't figured out the cheaper shipping process for that. But in the mainland, if you have, if you like, gifts to friends and family in mainland, we absolutely can ship. Just go online and order, place an order, and we'll process it for you. Yep. And if you follow us on social media, like Instagram or Facebook, we do pop-up markets once in a while. So we post, maybe not too far ahead, but maybe like a week and a half ahead of this event. And if you stay tuned and you find us where we're moving to next, oh, yeah, check us out on social media. Thank you, Kit and Darren, for being on the show today to inform, educate, and let our viewers know about Maui Chili Chili Oil. It has been such a pleasure having you both on the show. So thank you very much. Thank you for having us. Absolutely. And thank you to the folks at Think Tech Hawaii, as well for making shows like this happen. We had Haley and Michael helping us out today. So thank you very much. And until next time, aloha.