 Aloha and welcome to Hawaii Food and Farmer Series. Justine, that's me and Matthew Johnson are here every other week. We love to bring on farmers and all kinds of food producers that are part of our community. We love to hear the background and the history of these individuals that grow our food, the background of these companies, what motivates them, the partnerships that enable them to be created and initiated and thrive and how that all fits into our food system here on Oahu and throughout the state. In fact, speaking statewide, we have a special guest spanning multiple islands here today. Matt, if you could introduce our guest. Yeah, thanks Justine. So today is our first time we've actually had a rancher, an accountant on the show. So with us today is Bobby Farris, he just asked him like 30 seconds before the show started, still they might get it. With Konoa, thank you so much for joining us today. Thanks for having us. So we have a lot to go over and not a lot of times, we're just going to jump right into it. I want you to go ahead and just give us a little background on yourself, a little bit about growing up on Kauai and ranching and a little bit of that. Sure, sure. Again, thanks for having us here. Ranchers don't get a lot of camera time, but it's about time we do and tell our story a little bit. So yeah, third generation rancher on Kauai, where we feel the most favorable grass growing climate is. My granddad always had cattle around growing up as a little kid and my dad got involved and grew the ranch a little bit more. We grew up rodeoing quite a bit, me and my brother. He always had a lot of horses and cattle around and my brother and I both left the islands to go and rodeo full time and that ended up in Kansas, lived there through a couple of extreme winters and summers and decided to come home to a place where I know grass grows every day without any struggles and nobody needs to wear thermals or fight off heatstroke. So came back to Kauai and started to make good use of all of the fallowed ground from the cane and pineapple companies back in Atohuai and put together a commercial herd of cows and got back into ranching full time. And then so, and even before you, or during while you're doing the ranching, you have a history of actually doing professional roping. Yes, yes. That was a passion of mine since I was a little kid. I think started around eight years old or so and I never really thought about it until I got asked a couple of years ago how it started because my dad didn't rodeo. My granddad never rodeoed either and I couldn't even remember exactly where it started. But rodeoed since I was like eight years old and there was a circuit in Hawaii. It was called the Hawaii Cowboys Association and the HRCA and did that all through grade school and high school and so it was a dream of mine to go and do it full time. Tried that, never made much of a living doing it but I learned a lot, it was a great deal and got to see a lot of country that way and but yeah, it was good and still we still compete not as much as I used to, Konoa has been taking up a lot of time but it was a good diversion I think. So yeah, when we get into and talk about Konoa, it's a relatively new venture but bringing in a lot of the skill sets and the ranching we've been doing in the past and yeah, give us a little background on Konoa. Yeah, so Konoa Cattle Company has been around a while now. There's five of us co-founders that put this together. Konoa tries to make sure we look at it from both aspects, from the ranching side of it, you know what the ranchers were missing and needed in the industry and from the wholesale retail side, you know what the consumer is expecting. Labels as we all know have been getting more and more confusing, promising things on labels that are all good but yet so, they're going in so many directions anymore. So kind of like all natural and... Yeah, there's so many different criteria, grass-fed and not grass-fed and all that stuff and so again, Konoa was put together from the rancher and the consumer side and you know how do you make those meat in the middle which we felt wasn't happening. Hawaii was short of process and cold storage and so it was limiting the finished animals that stayed in Hawaii and so Konoa focused on the pieces of the puzzle that were missing so to speak and so we're a vertically integrated company. Konoa owns a large herd of cows, about 2,000 cows on Kauai and has just recently taken over the Hawaii's largest butchery right here in Honolulu and has added that to its portfolio if you would and so again ranching cattle through the processing part and then has a branding, marketing side of it also. That's unique here in Hawaii because there's a lot of ranches, there's a lot of cattle but this is the only processing facility in Hawaii? In Honolulu. In Honolulu. There are others in the state, there's two in the big on and three on Kauai, one on Molokai but this is the only one in Honolulu, it's the largest in the state also. And so what does that mean for the cattle that's being because without these processing centers that's a lot of cattle going to the main land they're raised here but sent over to the main land to get processed and then sent back which is a huge footprint. Right and that was part of what Konoa wanted to fix a little is the amount of cattle that we're leaving and not being able to stay just because facilities, there weren't enough facilities that way. We don't like the fact that the rancher doesn't be able to see their product go to full term but the facilities just weren't available. The great things that are happening in Hawaii with the local food push I think is also it opened a lot of doors for the cattle industry. We raise great cattle here, the climate is so conducive to what we do, grass grows every day. So it's just the right time I think. The other thing is the ag footprint is really changing, right? With cane and pineapple gone now there's so much fallow ground that's available to farming all kinds of farming that I think it's the right time to expand the cattle industry that way and the farming, this other supporting agriculture. And so I just want to like still like talk about the significance of of the slaughterhouse and your guys involvement with that and like Justine was saying where a lot of times the the cattle that's raised here if it's grass-fed here in Hawaii actually has to be shipped to the mainland for finishing. So go to get finishing in a feedlot or something, slaughter there, process there and then those cuts would then be shipped back to the markets here in Hawaii. Right. Wow. Yeah north of 90 percent of all the red meat proteins of beef comes is imported. We lose track as a ranchers if they leave, if it leaves Hawaii we don't know if that one's coming back or not. Right. It just gets into the commodity market. But yeah north of 90 percent of the red meat is imported. Wow. Yeah. So you know Kunoa feels that that's it's a it's a very volatile system. Hence the show, right? I mean it we don't all realize exactly how volatile we are to outside inputs for basics you know basics food protein you know. And so again you know Kunoa thought that that's a great part we can play in trying to bring some of that food security back home. Yeah. We have the production ability and so these pieces in the egg sector has just haven't been built out yet and that's part of what we're trying to do. And is the facility other ranchers can use as well? Absolutely. Okay. Absolutely. How many other ranches are you working with that can process there? Right now we're working with four or five different ranches we've just gotten started. Like we said we took over the facility in Thanksgiving 16 so November 16. So we're just getting all of the the peas and queues put together on it. But it's open to all the ranches right. So we do either we can third party. So you can bring your animals in and we can process and return it to you with your own label. We can buy the animals from you and and sell them under our label. If you're a home user and want it just to have an animal processed and you take back home and share with friends. Yeah so it's a true fee for service third party offer along with full service. So ranchers can just ranch sell their animals and then we take them the rest of the way for them or like I said return them on their label and or for home use. And that was super nice when we were talking about before the show. Kind of talking about the disconnect between the the ranchers sometimes and then the actual the marketing that needs to happen. So kind of the connection between the ranch and the end consumers and that's what the gap you guys are trying to fill. Right yeah about eight or ten years ago my dad and I had a meeting of the mines. It was a short meeting with more his mind than mine. But you know I told that I said we raised great cattle and the only ones that know about it is you and I and we got to go and sell our product. You know I got to leave the ranch and go sell the product and it's not something ranchers typically do or do we want to do right. We don't move around in town very very freely if you would. So but but there is a disconnect right so the consumers don't get to go to the ranch and the ranchers don't get to go to the consumers. And so the disconnect was you know Hawaii new consumers knew in Hawaii there was a lot of good products to get to be had but didn't know where to get them. And ranchers knew there were people that needed them but didn't know where to take them. And so again you know Kunoa was trying to be a part of that to bridge that gap so so ranchers can be ranchers and you know the retail community doesn't have to buy a cow or ranch to have local fresh meat. And so matching the product to the consumer is really something Kunoa focuses on. Awesome I definitely want to do a follow-up question on the uniqueness of that but we're going to take a quick 60 second break and we'll come right back. Hey has your signal just been taken over or am I supposed to be here? This is Andrew the security guy your co-host on Hibachi Talk. Please join us every Friday on Think Tech Away. Hi I'm Nicole Alexandrinos and I was born three weeks ago. Congratulations on being there for me for some of the few weeks of my life. I'm starting a new show The Millennial Mind every Wednesday at 2pm for the month of April where we'll go over some of the reasons why millennials are some of the most anxious and frustrated people at the moment. Are you looking to get shrunk? Join us on Shrink Wrap Hawaii. My name is Steven Phillip Katz. I'm a licensed marriage and family therapist. I see couples, individuals, families because you know why? Because we all have problems and if you're curious about shrinks and what they talk about come look at my show Shrink Wrap Hawaii and maybe you'll find your shrink. Aloha and welcome back to Hawaii Food and Farmer series. I am Matt here with Justine as always. Sometimes, all the weekend. We are talking to Bobby Ferraris. Ferris? Ferris, man. That's okay, yeah. I really wanted to get that right. Portuguese name, yeah. Yeah, yeah, gotta practice that some more. With Kunoa, the cattle company based in Kauai and then also here on Oahu. Yes. So wow, we still have a lot to talk about. So if you can talk a little bit about your, well I guess you had a question that you really wanted to get into? Well, I've been my next at the break but I want to get more. Okay, so there's a lot of things that are unique about your Kunoa with the raising the cattle as well as the processing. I'm also curious that when I first heard about Kunoa was through Energy Accelerator. I know they were recently getting into ad with renewable energy and if you can kind of talk about where that connection is with the facilities and kind of the parts, how that plays an influence and how that came about for Kunoa. Yes, Energy Accelerator was a great step for us, stepping stone for us. And just to explain, so Energy Accelerator is like an incubation program for getting investment for startup companies? For startup companies, right. And going through all the process of startup companies which were nothing that I thought were problematic but were very problematic in the sense of getting our feet wet if you would in like one of the things where we're customer awareness, which ranchers think they know exactly what people want on a stake or in them. But what it taught me personally is that I'm the seller, not the buyer. Therefore I have to be responsive to the buyer because that's my business. I'm selling. And so I can't be the buyer and the seller. And when that paradigm shift happened, it made the path a lot clearer. And we're a little bit odd company as far as the Energy Accelerator goes, given it's so ag. And typically it's like more energy tech type company. Yeah, very, very cutting edge energy tech stuff. And so how it all pieced together is one is they were looking into ag a lot because it's one of those things that Hawaii really needs like renewables. But energy was a real hold back for the build out of our business, the cattle industry. It's cold storage is so expensive in Hawaii. And so we had to really focus on the ability to not let the energy costs run the business if you would or run it on the ground for that matter. And so the renewables and the efficiencies of energy uses has always been in the forefront of the business of Kunoa because it is the single most expensive thing in the business next to the production side itself of the cattle. So yeah, Energy Accelerator played a big role, opened a lot of doors for us. And continues to mentor us in the growth of the business, which is a big thing. You know, Hawaii is a little place and there's a lot of business that happens there. And they've just opened a lot of doors for us, introduced us to great people. And they're just a great team, very supportive. And then again, I don't know if we specified what that's meant. Lots of solar panels on your processing facility feeding into the. Yeah, currently we have a fairly large PV system on the building, all installed up and running, almost cut our electricity bill in half. So a massive big thing. That's a huge impact, a huge impact. And in the future, we plan to build a lot more. One of our co-founders is a renewable energy solar specifically. And so yes, as we get everything kind of put into place and prioritized renewables, a lot more panels are going to go up. Yeah, a lot of roof space we have there. Lots of sun too on the west side there. Yeah. And the facilities in Kimberl Industrial Park? Yes. Bobby, talk a little bit about the products that you're going to be focusing on, some of the beef products. Well, right now we're doing mostly grind. You know, the carcass is made up of mostly hamburger, more commonly termed. And so it's the anchor product that we're going to produce. It's the most consumed product as far as red meat goes. And so that's going to be our focus product. We're also going to introduce a meat bar. It's kind of a cross between a beef jerky and a kind of a pepperoni stick if you would. But it's a nice clean protein bar. All local beef. And so that's going to be offered in stores here soon also. You were saying before the show that you guys actually ordered it and processed it. And yeah, you have about 16,000 pieces on this way. Yeah, we're going to have a lot of it on this way. Yeah. What stores do you already have accounts set up? Or where do you see that being available? That's not, we don't have any specific destination for those bars yet. But they're going to be, the plan is mostly all the convenience stores, of course. Grocery stores and so on and so forth. So just something you see being available at like a 7-Eleven ABC store? We hope. We hope that's our hope. Wow, that's great. Conveniently available. And that's a good clean protein between meal type of thing. So is there a premium price on it? Or is it more affordable because things are being done in-house? Or is there like a premium? It's a premium product, a priced product. It's not your typical beef jerky priced product. But it's a good clean meat and so we think it's priced appropriately. And of course, you know, like everything else, volume plays into price points. And so hopefully if it's a good mover, it's going to become something price point positive. Is it something you hope to export or is that already the plan or will it all be consumed in-state? We hope it's a take home gift from Hawaii. It's a very unique label, very Hawaii focused. It's easy to see recognizable that it's a Hawaii product. And so yeah, we think it's going to be one of those cool products to take home. The label will be a keeper, we hope. So Bobby, one thing we like to do is kind of have our guests look into the future and kind of predict what's going to happen. So obviously where you see Konoa in the next five years, I mean a lot of exciting things are happening. You just recently purchased the harvesting facility and where you see the company go. But then also ranching in general, what's the future of ranching? Is this something that you're advising everyone to start getting into? Because now there's this new model in place and what's the future look like? Well, rancher by definition is an optimist. It's not a Fortune 5 company that way historically. But I see lots of positive things for ranching. Hawaii is a great place. They're very supportive. The local food drive has been phenomenal, right? It's been the light at the end of the tunnel that keeps ranchers and farmers doing what they do. Farmers never meet the end consumer and so they're out there doing their thing day in and day out and they never really see the rewards that consumers and the smiles it puts on their faces. But as far as ranching, I think there's a lot of opportunity. I think there's so much available lands right now in Hawaii. I really believe that Konoa is bringing something to the table that will allow the ranching industry to develop quite a bit more and it's just about capacity. It's not that we have a magic potion that we're going to sprinkle on the business, but it's just about there's more available facilities now and so ranchers can take advantage of that. And then the other great thing is that the consumers will be able to have more variety of products, different ranchers, different labels, different types of raising production models that will be entered into the retail space. And then knowing kind of the conditions that are good for raising cattle and knowing that right now we're importing about 95% of meat, what's kind of like a ballpark of what's available and the goal percentage for it to be local? We'll never be able to do all of the beef that's consumed in Hawaii. And that has to do with rising tourist numbers, right? I mean, we're just we're never going to we're never going to get ahead of it. Yeah, but you know the goal, I guess, would be to be able to keep all the cattle we raise in Hawaii. Now there's the consumer number is there and so the question will be can't Hawaii build the facilities? Can we build enough facilities on every island that will allow to be able to keep all the animals in Hawaii? And so that's something what we as ranchers will have to work on diligently here in the years to come. But I think it's possible. I really do. I really think it's possible. I think it's it would be the right thing to do. It'll show the ranchers that the consumers are supporting them. And then when they see that support, they will answer back with the build out of their production. And so with the facility that you guys just built, you're saying to be able to handle you know more of the market, how many more of these these facilities is it something that we would need like three more just on Oahu alone or what do you think it was going to take? Well, the facility is designed for 50 head a day, single shift. So there's quite a bit of potential there for for growth. And we're on seven acres there. And we're on a third of it. And so there's a lot of build out capacity there. And so it's a bright future, right? There's there's a lot of expansion opportunities. Yes, lots of growth opportunities. And you know, the cattle industry is one spoke in the ag wheel. We like to call it, you know, we we'd like to see the cattle industry support and be supported by the farming industry also, you know, by products of farmers is great cattle feed. And I think it's a way that the two can work in great harmony that way. And that was another thing you were saying too, is that you guys are collecting your own feed now? Yeah, we do a bailing project on Kauai. So we bail a lot of local grasses to get us through times where we have to pen cattle up to sort them or wean cattle. And so we don't import any commercial feed anymore. In our production line, we do have some imported feed for our horses and stuff. But other than that, all the cattle feed is stuff that we locally harvest on Kauai. And it's a great feed. It's a feed they're used to. So their little billies are used to that type of feed. And so when we have to pen them up to do anything to them to doctor them and or to sort them, like I said, or do anything to them, it's the feed they've been on that they're used to. And you were saying that their bill before, so you used to have to actually import the feed. And you're saying the bill was like a million dollars a year? Yeah, there was a year when we were shipping on a lot of cattle at our place. And it was a droughty year. And yeah, the feed costs were just enormous. I mean, the reason we got into the bailing part of it is we weren't going to be able to afford those feed costs the following year. It was a downturn in the market. And we're short on feed. And we're shipping so many calves that it required so much commercial feed that we weren't going to be able to do it another year. And so I called up some of my buddies that I rode it with in the mainland and said, hey, I don't know anything about it. I don't know what we need. But we need to bail some grass out here. And there had been people that were bailing here and there, especially when the dairy industry was going in Honolulu, they would bail here, but not a lot of those guys were around. And so there was nobody for me to go and watch and try to learn from or get any used equipment. We had to bring stuff in from the mainland, but it has definitely saved our operation. It's been phenomenal. Yeah, that's great. I know that there's a lot of other, like we were talking about Monique, who's been on the show before, when they kick out dairy. I mean, that's something she's always been trying to figure out how she can get locally sourced. Importing feed is hard, right? Because you, you know, anywhere else in the upper 48, if you run short on feed, you can call and they truck feed in. I mean, you can truck it from as far as they need to. We don't have that ability here. So as ranchers and farmers or dairymen and women, you need to really watch your feed supply and make sure you have enough stored, which ties up money. And nobody likes to just, you know, have money sitting in the barn. So it's, it's one of those things you have to balance. But yes, you have to be able to watch your feed source and make sure you have enough feed around. I think we're running out of time. We might only have a minute. But one thing I want to ask quickly, what that we've talked about in terms of, you know, you talked about that face to face time that ranchers don't necessarily get with consumers. But we've talked about a lot of farmers and act tourism is a big thing. Do you guys have any thing currently or in the future where people can come on to your facility in 30 seconds? Yeah, the hope is to be able to be able to integrate the consumers and the cattle industry, right? Be able to come to the facility, visit, get a tour and show them what it's all about. Okay. So that is in the future. Yes. Yes. Awesome. Great. That wraps up our time. Right there. Thank you so much for coming on. Thank you for having us. Appreciate it.