 Welcome to another episode of Hawaii Food and Farmers Series. I'm your co-host, as always, Matt Johnson with Justina Spiritive. Thank you so much for joining me again. You're welcome. And as always, we're here every other Thursday. Yeah, we try to get here when we can on Thursday starting at four o'clock. And we're talking to Hawaii's local food farmers, foodies, anybody who cares about Hawaii's local food system. As always, you can join the conversation by tweeting us at atthinktechhi, shown here below by the screen. And you can also call in, we always have those people calling in and asking those questions. Just dial us at 415-871-2474. So, Justine, who do we have on the show today? I want to introduce you to Lauren Shoup today. So we've wanted Lauren on the show since the show started, actually. Lauren has been a part of our food system here on Oahu. And from Big Island originally, played a multitude of roles and introduced things into our food system here. So it's really exciting to kind of get the background of the business you started and then the partnership that we've talked about between Hawaii farmers, markets, Lauren's business and Oahu Fresh, which is the Oahu Food Hub, which we mentioned. And so it's kind of time to check in with you guys. You have a lot of... Yeah, we kind of talk about them a lot. So it's nice to actually have you here to respond. So definitely want to get your background, what's new, your new products. And then I'm excited to hear from you guys of the new occupants in the food hub and what's going on. Right on. Well, thank you for having me. So, yeah, why don't you talk a little bit about your background and how Hawaii Farmers Market came about? Because that's kind of like your first real project you got into. Yeah, so I was born and raised over on the Big Island, grew up there, graduated high school, went to San Diego for a few years. Wasn't really my style. School wasn't your style. I didn't really do the whole school thing. Yeah, but I moved back. I'm just like a, I guess a natural born entrepreneur. So I had a lot of ideas I wanted to do in the mainland, but it was one of those deals like if I start something up there, I'll have to be there for an extended period of time, you know, five, 10, 15 years, who knows. But I just couldn't see myself living there for that long. So I thought Oahu would be a good place between Big Island, you know, it's a little country there. So Oahu is a little more city. Plus, I did live here during high school for a short period of my time, went to Pune off a little bit. So yeah, I knew Oahu and I really liked to have a lot of friends here. So I decided to come back just so I could start. I didn't know what I was going to do. I had no idea. At the time, I actually thought I was going to be like some kind of a personal trainer or something, but obviously that didn't happen. All right, so the school didn't work out, personal training didn't work out. So yeah. So anyways, I moved back here and actually while I was in the mainland, my dad was talking to a farmer over on the Big Island. What that farmer did was he had a farm growing like fruits and he would make jams and jellies. And what he would do, he'd come to Oahu every other week to sell them at farmer's markets. And my dad was like, whoa, that's pretty crazy. I mean, you're doing airfare, getting a hotel room, your storage, like car rental, like all this stuff just to do a farmer's market. That's pretty crazy. And the guy's like, yeah, you know, it's worth it. It gets my name out there. I do a couple of stores and sampling. And my dad was like, whoa, maybe my son could just do it for you. And I'm like, and, you know, my dad told me about the opportunity and was like, well, take him up on it. So I met the guy over on the Big Island. He kind of told me about his farm and his products. And then he flew over here with me to Oahu to show me one of the farmer's market he does, which is the KCC Farmer's Market. It's one of the bigger and better ones here in Hawaii. And it kind of all just started there. So I started bringing over his products, starting at one farmer's markets. And then, you know, you get asked, hey, you want to do this market? I'm sure I'll try that market too. So then it kind of, so everything kind of went to the wayside, like all that training stuff I was going to do, and anything else, any other plans I had. But anyways, I started to expand farmers markets. So I had this one product, just jams and jellies, brought over from the Big Island. And then I would just, you know, I went to 12 markets a week. And then eventually we had a kiosk Alamoana, and then just a whole bunch of different stuff happened. But then the kind of a cool thing was how to get other people from the Big Island asking me to sell their products as well too, like macadamia nuts. There is a salt company that makes smoked sea salts. There was teas. So there's chocolate guys, just tons of other companies, because they saw how good it worked between me and this guy selling jams. So I mean, but it was pretty cool. So basically, my company is farmed to Market Hawaii. So we bring products from outer islands like Kauai, Maui, Big Island, here to Oahu to be sold because it's a lot bigger market. Obviously, there's more tourists. And then it also took me a couple years to find who my market was. So it's not necessarily locals all the time. It's like Japanese tourists and just in general, tourists alike. So because, you know, I was trying to do all these local markets with jam, but it's just the jams, you know, it's really expensive products, a lot of these local products. And then obviously tourists, they love to give gifts as well. So then I started getting into more of the tourist markets. And that's where things started really happening. That's when the business really took off and we could bring in more products and start moving a lot of things. But yeah, so now we I don't even know how many different farms we deal with, but you know, like a handful or couple handful, I guess, but there's a lot of farms we deal with. So that's pretty cool. One thing I want to remind me, you mentioned your dad. So your dad is a very entrepreneurial guy too. I remember a story you told me before about like one year for your birthday, he gave you like a GT license. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. So for my, instead of, you know, a graduation president from high school, my dad gave me my first business. So like a, you know, a GT license. Just like a tax license. Yeah. And then I'm just a, you know, a business basic, you know, a basic business license, you know, just a good business. So I'm like, ah, that was pretty cool. And you know, I came up with a name for it. And then, but that was, you know, when I went to California, so I didn't really use it for three years. And then when it came back, I instantly started using because I was doing the jam thing. Because that was just generic, like Lauren Chubb. It was called, it was called old soul tree LLC. It's like old, all the S-O-U-L tree. I just came out with it one day. And then, and then, but yeah, I didn't really do. Yeah. Are you an old soul? Yeah. So anyways, yeah, I did that. And then, yeah, I actually use that. I was doing business under that name for like two years. And then I switched to Lauren Chubb and Associates DBA Farm to Market Hoy. So, yeah. So that's kind of how that worked out. But then I expanded, I guess I'm getting a little ahead of myself. Now there's like three or four different companies, which Matt and I have a company together. I do like a local fishing company where we sell like seafood, like a local seafood company where we sell like shrimps and fish. So, yeah. So let's kind of back up with that a little bit. So, so you're doing the farmers markets, you're bringing all the products from neighbor islands and just start expanding. It worked out well with the jams and then the macadamia nuts and all these other products. But then you started seeing other opportunities outside of that. And that's where the fish came from. Yeah. So what was happening was there's these guys on small handline boats. So there's big long lines and there's a short line boats. And they, it's a whole nother story, but basically they catch different types of fish. Like the, I mean, it's the same species of fish, but the way they catch them and the timing and the size is completely different. So the short line boats would catch smaller fish, which were, didn't really sell well in the auction. So local people wanted to buy them, you know, a 30 pound ahi, 20 pound ahi, you know, smaller ones. So we start up this business where it's called Nimitz Fish Market. And we had a food truck, like fully permitted. We had a spot for it and everything. And we go down to these small boats and buy the fish directly off them. So not only are the fishermen getting a better price, because I'm paying them a much higher price than they would have gotten the auction, then I can turn around and sell to local families that are like, some of these people are on food stamps. I mean, this was a big deal. So when you're buying like a 20, 30 pound fish, it's not cheap. It's going to be like over a hundred bucks, you know, but it feeds your family for days. And most of these people I came had like five, six, eight, you know, people in their family. So it's pretty cool to sell one fish, feed this whole family for a good price. It's like really, really good meat, super healthy for you. Fresh, I mean, literally I was, I mean, we, our slogan was local fish for local people. And it was kind of, I mean, literally back my truck up to the boat and buy the fish, drive maybe a quarter mile down the road and sell it. So it's like, you couldn't get any fresher, there's just no way. So that was, that was pretty fun. And we still, so that business, we don't do as much right now, or we're still kind of working on our, trying to get the supply, because it's really hard to deal with these small boats, just in pricing and weather and hurricanes and it's a whole host of things. But we still sell shrimp though, these local caught shrimp, which are ama ebi we call them Hawaiian deep sea shrimp. There's these really, really big red shrimp. You can eat them sashimi style. They're super good, just raw. The stuff you get like in a really expensive, like Japanese restaurant, but we still sell those at the farmer's market. People love those. It's, it's, it's a real popular item. It's really cool. Also, I want to make sure. Yeah, I mean, it's great to see how you've expanded the products that you're working with. And it's nice to know that you've also been able to like hire other folks to help you out. So I mean, that's one true test of an entrepreneur starting a business is then, you know, being able to provide that opportunity to others. And so then, why don't you talk about what interested you in the hub and partnering with Matt on that? Yeah. So I'll get to start, get the first point you're saying with the hiring people. I love that. Like, that's like a super big thing to me. Cause like, now it's like I have like all these people that pretty much depend on work from me, you know, like they don't, it's not that they can't get another job somewhere else, but it's just like, you know, cash and a few other family and stuff like that. So it's like, I'm helping these other people, like the jobs and that's, that's amazing. Like that's the whole point. Like, you know, it's like, I just love creating things, you know, so it's like really fun for me to like, I don't know, create a situation like the Nimitz fish market thing. Like even though it didn't do extremely well, it was like really cool. It gave some people jobs and this and that and all the farmers market thing. Like right now we're talking, I'm doing four farmers market as we're speaking right now. I got four farmers markets going on on this island, you know, so it's like, and you need people at every single one of them, you know, so it's like, I'm so, you know, it's like five people per market. Yeah. It's like one or two people per market pretty much. So it's like, you know, it's like six people working right now. It's like, that's pretty cool. You know, it's, I don't know, I love that kind of stuff. So I really like creating those things. But yeah, so Matt and I met a long time ago, but when I guess I was still kind of doing training stuff at CrossFit, because it's a CrossFit master year. Yeah. Get me started on that. We're going to forget all about this stuff and get into that. Yeah. But yeah, Matt and I met a long time ago, but we both needed a warehouse at the same time. And then I always had the idea of, I was one of the commercial kitchen to rent out to people, like, you know, of course, I could use it myself at the time. I didn't have any product that I needed or any idea that I needed for myself right away. But I always thought like, hey, all these people need a kitchen. You might as well work out in my kitchen, you know, instead of having, I don't know where they're going, you know, doing out of their house or what they're doing, but I rather them, you know, I can make money off it and, you know, they're all under one roof. It's pretty cool. So yeah, Matt and I came together and he has all had the, he's the one that had the food hub idea. So he's always had that. So it's kind of like, you know, pretty similar ideas coming together. And then, you know, started really slow and we know you're just building and building and building and talking to more people and all kind of like really comes together. But yeah, now we're like really going with a lot of different tenants and big tenants. But, you know, it's kind of a struggle the whole time, but we're really getting it done and we're doing it on, you know, a tight budget, but it's still working out really, really well. And who are your newest tenants? The newest tenants, we have Aya Mahewahi, I believe. That's how you say it. Yeah. And then they're like tarot guys. So they do like poi and just raw tarot, cooked tarot, do a whole host of things like that. And then we have our Keith's cookies is one of our newer ones and he's awesome. Guy's awesome. His name is Brent. He's a real great guy. I've known him from the farmers' markets for years. He's really, really cool. Takes care of the place. We got Kahala Fresh moving in, Kahala Fresh, which you can see all over the place. I think Nortron is like down to earth, Whole Foods. They do like granolas and pancake mixes and they do flavored macadamia nuts and they do a whole host of items. And so to sell that kind of product, what like granola and stuff, how much local does that need to be? Or how does that fit into the? I mean, they're trying to use as much local fruit as possible. I mean, obviously we can do everything local. That's just almost impossible. But yeah, I know they're all using local fruit and then, you know, obviously they're making it here. So that's a big deal too. You know, again, they're creating jobs for people. So everyone that we're, you know, they're all creating jobs too. So it's pretty cool. I really like that aspect of it. Because now, how many businesses are working on the food hub? I want to say like 12 or something. I don't know. We have like catering guys that, you know, use it every once in a while when they have catering jobs. Sweet caramel guy. There's like a food truck here there. And then what kind of cross pollination have you seen between the tenants, if any? Well, with Matt's business, a lot of them will order fresh produce through him to use in their catering jobs or, you know, through making their products and things like that. Also, like distribution, again, Matt can take out products for them and distribute to stores. I can help by, you know, trying out products at farmers' markets to see if it works or not. You know, because that's a really good thing. You create this product, whatever it may be. But it may, we may like it, but who knows if the general public will like it. And that being said, like farmers' markets are a lot different from retail too. So it's, it is definitely a whole other animal. So if it works in farmers' markets, absolutely no guarantee that it'll work in a retail setting as well. They're completely different. Because at farmers' markets, people love a story. Like they want to start like, oh, did you make this? Like, where did you grow it? Like, yeah. So it's a whole other thing. I think we need to go do a break. Yeah. I couldn't really hear. I think something in my lyrics. Yeah, we're going to take a quick break and come back and hang out to one. Time. A little responsibility can go a long way because it's all about having fun on game day. Hi, welcome back to Hawaii Food and Farmers Series. I'm your co-host, Justine Espiritu. This is your co-host, Matthew Johnson. Today, we have Lauren Shoup, who is co-founder of the Oahu Food Hub. He has a couple other businesses and products. So we just kind of got into your history and how you kind of came into your own with your business, caught up a little on the Food Hub. Not school, not fitness. Not school, not crossfit. At least crossfit brought you guys together. You'll always have crossfit. You knocked me over at all. It was messed up. So then you're kind of talking about all the tenants and kind of some of the cross pollination that happened. And so if you want to talk about your newest product, that kind of seems like a result of that cross pollination as well. Yeah. So again, Matt was helping with this project years ago. He started or he helped to get a breadfruit farm put together. So get a grant going for that and get it planted up in Mililani. And then we went to a function about a year ago now. Actually, well, it's kind of time flies, but a year ago and they're saying, okay, well, we got all this breadfruit. What are we going to do with it? And that's kind of everyone's like, I'll do this, do that, whatever. And this is anyways, I saw that no one in Hawaii is making hummus. You can't go to the store and buy a local hummus. It doesn't happen. Unless you go to a specific restaurant or maybe down to earth or have your own one, but it's garbanzo beans and it's very basic. But there's no general hummus company in Hawaii. I'm like, well, that's a pretty interesting thing. I want to do that. So about a couple of years ago, two years ago, I started making my own hummus out of garbanzo beans, but I make it with beets or sweet potato, jalapeno, habanero, avocado, and they're really, really good, but they're just wasn't local enough for me to take to a farmer's market. So I just didn't really pull a trigger on it. It was just kind of thing I made for my friends and whatever. But then while I was up at this conference, I made a couple of people from the big island and they had a breadfruit hummus recipe. And I was like, well, that changes the whole game. So that's exactly what I've been looking for. So they're kind of making it. And then I just decided to go for it. I was like, okay, well, you know, I'll try it out. So I started using all the flavors and all the stuff I was doing before. I just swapped the garbanzo beans for the ulu. That's basically what's going on here. So now I came up with this company Ulu Mono Inc. And then we make hummuses out of breadfruit. No garbanzo beans. Zero garbanzo beans. So it's all from either this island or big island. I actually got breadfruit from Kauai before. So it's awesome because we're using stuff grown here. It's not grown here, it's grown here. So it's pretty awesome to do something like that. So obviously not all the ingredients are 100% white or anything like that. But the main ingredient, breadfruit, which is like 90% of the product, is from here. So it's great. But even the feature flavors are kind of distinctly, those are the flavors you see in Hawaii, the tumeric, jalapenos. Yeah, that soup. Yeah, definitely woken up on sweet potato. That one's really cool. You get that really nice purple. And the thing that's cool about our hummuses is it's all natural coloring, but the color is just crazy. Super, super bright. So vibrant. But it's all natural. Yeah, the beet one is really, really vibrant. But there's no red dye or anything like that in there. And that's been an interesting lure for children too. But I've noticed that the farmers like it. Like I always recommend the sweet potato and the beets. Yeah, they just want to try these. I want the red one. I want the purple one. They just want to try it. And honestly, they like it. We have a whole testimonial page on there and you'll see little kids like, Oh, I have it for my lunch every day. And like, you know, the mom's packing. It's like super cool. So we're just, we're doing farmers markets right now, but we're trying to get into stores like in the next couple weeks when we have all our labels done and barcodes and all that fun stuff. So you can look forward to seeing those in stores pretty soon. And this is your first product yourself? Yeah, yeah. So this is, yeah. So everything else I've been selling. Slinging everyone else's. Yeah. Now this is the Lauren show. Yeah, Lauren show. Yeah. So this is the first one that I actually, you know, came up with a fair amount of the recipe and like. I want to ask you about that. Did you have to pay them for the recipe? Well, it's like, I mean, the one they gave me was not what you see there. Like it's not. Oh, okay. It's like a base, but it's not modified it. Oh, yeah. No, I mean, I mean, this is good, but it's just like, they gave me like a basic one. And then I took that and it ran with what I was doing before, which is all the flavors like beads and sweet potatoes and jalapenos and then kind of made it into what it is today. So it's kind of took an evolution from what they gave me. But yeah, it is from Hawaii for the Hawaii producers, Hawaii producers, I think the name Hawaii co-op, something like that. Yeah. Anyways, they're awesome. Yeah. Oh, it doesn't look like they gave you the recipe. Yeah. Yeah. So it was really cool. Yeah. So, but yeah, our slogan is like increasing the production and consumption of Ulu and Hawaii. So that's, that's what we kind of stand for in that company. Yeah. And that's what's cool with kind of tying back to the food hub. And that's kind of the basis of the whole purpose of that is, is having that, that foundation of local food products coming into this physical warehouse and then having the means to process it and then having outlets like the farmers market that Lauren's going to, CSA restaurants that we're going to. And it's neat. I think we also haven't even really had a chance to even do that, move more of that cross-pollination with all the different tenants because we've just been so busy putting it all together, bringing people in and kind of organizing and feeling how it all works. And where I'm getting excited is now thinking ahead like, okay, how do we have more, because some of the tenants in the building don't even know each other yet because they just literally just, everyone's just kind of running around doing their own thing. So now I think it's time for a pahana. Yeah, yeah, let's try to have a number of food hub pahanas, just ends up out. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Our friends and we get a little carried away, the king shows up. But having more of those kind of things and workshops and, and, and there has already been some, you know, interaction already, but I think there's just so much more once everybody realizes what everybody's doing and has more of that interaction. I think it's just going to take off even more in terms of the community that's in that space. Yeah, so I think we have a good set of core tenants right now, and then like exactly what Matt said, now it's just kind of like go time. Now it's like, we're really like, hey, we got a set. Now we can like, what do we really want to do and what can we like produce and get out there and like new products and, you know, keep it all here. Yeah, because like Lauren and I are still figuring out, oh, the electric just went out, you know, so how do we, you know, we're still kind of focused on some of the core basics. Yeah, so it can't be like, hey guys, let's all get together and come up with some new product ideas. It's like, hey, get the power working, and then we can talk. So yeah, so yeah, a lot of, a lot of more potential with that. And another note, it's something that you guys have talked about, wanting to develop, is even people reaching out that aren't a tenant that don't have a business yet, and they say, hey, I'm thinking about doing this. Do you have this? I've gotten a couple of those calls that I've tried to like field over to you guys. Someone's asking me about lemons and I'm like, well, what do you want it for? Well, I want to like try out this thing and I've tried to send them over to you guys at the hub and almost, even if you're not a tenant, but that that kind of incubator space for food businesses is still a possibility there Yeah, absolutely. And it's good because like, you know, Matt and I have seen a lot of stuff, especially in the local food environment. So it's like, if someone comes to me with an idea, I can quickly tell them like, why neither is good or bad, or you're going to hit this kind of a struggle, or you're not going to find that product here, or, you know, something that's where someone's already doing it, you know, so something like that. So it's really good to just get like, I like, I know I love helping everyone out. So they come to me like, hey, learn, I want to do this. I'm like, well, not so fast. I mean, there's, you know, there's like 10 other guys doing it. It's an interesting compliment to what's offered at like UH and the ag business program with Steven Chang. It's a little, you know, he's has the whole business thing down. But for you guys to really have that experience in the, in the market, it's cool for folks. Yeah, I think it is a neat combination of we have like established businesses that are the kind of like keys cookies where he's actually moved out of the shared use kitchen and we're developing his own kitchen because he's just really growing. Keys cookies, Brent. Oh, cookie monster. And so kind of he's established doing his own thing, but then we still have that space for like, Kristen showed up yesterday, where she has an idea of actually raising crickets and making a cricket flower. Jamison. Jamison. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Oh, cool. Yeah. And so, so, yeah. So like Lauren was saying, like we can kind of provide some of that, you know, feedback right away. But like, yeah, that's a good idea or I don't think it's going to work. Criket Margaret is saturated. Like how about the cockroach mongers? So we got plenty of those. Yeah, that cockroach mongers product, if you're really going to take off. Yeah. And that, and so those kind of things that, and we're learning more too about like Lauren's doing the Hulu Hummus, like product development, packaging, labeling, all those kind of things that I think eventually we'll be able to provide an incubation for that as well as we get better at it. So hopefully, yeah, one stop kind of shop for any new local food product. Yes, that's pretty, pretty cool because yeah, like Matt can use the same containers I can use and we can, and we can always the same like label maker or like graphic artists and like there's so many things you need in business and it's like really hard to find every single one of them. So it's like, it's like, hey, use one. How do you like it? It'll work out? Good. Okay. Well, maybe I'll use it too. You know, so there's a lot of things like, you know, like the Cookie Monster guy, like he helps out a lot. I always ask him questions like, how'd you do that? Or like, what did you think about that? Yeah, and Gooch, when we're working on the Baba Ganoush recipe, just having like the most like well-known chef in town just walking by as we're like measuring things and be like, can you taste this fast? He showed up yesterday. I was making the eggplant parmesan and I just finished it and I put a container. I was like, hey, Gooch, check this out. What do you think? He's like, you know my two cents? I was like, yeah. And he literally picked it up and he was shaking it and it stuff went flying everywhere. He's like, see? I think, wait, was the hat on? Yeah, the hat was on and he just wanted to show that the container was too big for the product that you need. Yeah, that's the point he was trying to make and he ruined the product that I was getting ready to go deliver. Yeah, it was just kind of funny. But yeah, exactly. Those kind of things are super helpful. Yeah, so we have one minute left. Do you want to try to talk about bike share? News flash. Yeah. So I think bike share Hawaii started putting down stations. Yeah. So people will be able to bike to the food hub. Not that there's a station near the food hub, just trying to make a connection. People can bike to the food hub and keep going around and come back to the station. Yeah, but it's exciting. We're going to have 100 stations and a thousand bikes. First stations started going down in Kakaako today and the system will go live June 28th. So we have talked about ideas with people of bike delivery of CSA bags maybe or something. I think there's room for us to collaborate. So next year we can have this same show format and have more cross-pollination of our projects. Yeah. So much cross-pollination. Cross at all. Okay. Should we wrap it up? I think that's it for today. We'll see you next, next Thursday.