 This is our first show today so I'm super excited to have everyone here with me. This show is meant to dive into stories of local product entrepreneurs and how they are growing their companies from right here in Hawaii. Our first guests are Kelly Stewart and Brandon Von Domitz, founders of Big Island Coffee Roasters and Espresso Bites based in Puna, Hawaii Island. Welcome guys to the show. Thanks, Mellie. Thanks, Mellie. We're so excited to be here. Congratulations on the new show. Thank you. So why don't you guys get started by sharing your story and how did you get started with your company? You want to start? Pick it up. You're great at it. Okay. So back in 2010 we were living in Portland and we were trying to buy a farm on Portland. We just wanted to live like really peaceful homestead life and like grow cabbage and carrots. Sounds right. Yeah. And in the middle of the night, one night Brandon was doing a Google Craigslist search and up popped a farm in Hawaii and it was owner financed and it came with coffee and the coffee was a little dilapidated but it was still coffee, a business and a home and we were like, this sounds like a joke. And so he told me the next morning and I was like, we got a call on that. And as it turns out a lot of people thought it was a scam so they did not contact the owner thankfully for us. So we flew over, we met the guy, it looked great. There was junk everywhere but we didn't see any of that. It was a total mess but we were like, this is like, there are so many projects that we can do here and so much learning and growth and we can just live our peaceful homestead lives here and learn about coffee. Yeah, we just felt potential. It was just like all potential for us. So you just had that good feeling when you walked onto the property. Yeah. Immediately. You know when you know it. Yeah. Yeah. Okay, so you landed the property and now there's all this junk around and you kind of get started with whatever you're going to do. What was next? So the next part of that was that he taught us how to run his tropical flower business and we did that for two years and while we were doing that, we were teaching each other about coffee, teaching ourselves about coffee. He did a lot of reading and research and taught ourselves to taste. But we did it in a different way, a little bit modeled after Portland, the specialty coffee model, which was not common here at the time. And so we, when we first tasted the coffee, we thought it was horrible and we thought we moved to a junk farm, but we still didn't care. And so it kind of became a goal to create coffee that we really loved and our family and friends back home really loved. But what does that mean like Portland style coffee? How would you describe that? So specialty coffee is a system where there is you really take care of the value chain from beginning to end and you maintain product integrity. And so when you're roasting coffee, or let's just say roasting. When you're roasting coffee, it's a lot like having two pieces of bread. You've got a really good piece of bread and you've got a really bad, bold piece of bread. And if you burn them both, they taste the same. And so part of the specialty coffee model, and this is only a small sliver, is in roasting in a way that you can taste the origin and everything kind of comes through. So you're not burning the product. But if everything comes through, so do the defects. And so you have to make a very clean coffee. And you take care of the people and the environment along the way. And so we didn't see a lot of that going on in our neck of the woods. And in addition to that, we bought our property in Pune. And nobody had heard of Pune coffee. And so it was like bad, no coffee girls in Pune. So we did that for about two and a half years. And then we submitted one of our coffees to the statewide cupping competition. And we won first place out of all the coffee in Hawaii. And we didn't even go to the conference. We didn't go to anything. We were totally shocked. Yeah. So you won like Best in Show. Best coffee in Hawaii. Best in the state. Oh my gosh. And you guys came out of nowhere. Yes. And no Pune coffee had ever won before. Yeah, it's usually Kona and then Ka'u more and recently ears. Yeah. And where's Pune exactly? East side of the Big Island. OK, OK. So kind of between Hilo and Volcano. Yeah, like between Hilo and Pahala, like Ka'u. It was on the south side. Yeah, Hilo is immediate. East and Pune is like south. All right, so you guys win Best in Show. And then just the whole company explode from there. What did you guys do with that? We sold out. We sold out of our coffee and we decided to that we needed to do more. And at the same time, I mean, 2013 was a really pivotal year for us. That year, we won a grant through Innovate Hawaii for the first coffee processing equipment to come to the east side of the Big Island because now we saw other farmers were having trouble with coffee quality also. So we thought, well, maybe we can process their coffee and we can like work on the region because we would tell people we're Pune coffee and they're like your Kona coffee. I've never heard of Pune coffee. Good coffee only grows in Kona. And so we're like, well, maybe they think that because we don't have the processing equipment. So I applied for a grant and I got it. And then we started working with farmers a little down the road. That same year, we got a Senate certificate for our work with farmers and work in that region. And then as the year closed out, another one of our coffees reached number 19 out of over 400 worldwide coffees reviewed on a list called coffee reviews, top 30. And so then a Pune coffee made number 19 in the world was our honey yellow. Things changed. Yeah. And then we're like, let's get rid of the flower business. We can be done with the flowers now. Yeah. Yeah. We fully transitioned. And how many farmers were you working with? And they were all based in Pune? A little in Ka'u and a couple in Hamakua at the time. And we didn't, you know, we didn't have a brand. We didn't have a name. This was before we had really started building our brand. That came out later on in the year. We did we I would say that big island coffee roasters were born. And that started with a subscription service. Or how did you kind of start that? Was it all word of mouth? Yeah, it was a lot of word of mouth. But yeah, so 2013 is when we went through a rebranding effort. And then that's how we like we have the logo that we have today that we used. Yeah, the pig, wonderful bore representing Pune and Big Island for sure. And then all the awards started stacking up that year, too. So it was like by mid year, we had our new website up with our new logo. And then we had awards coming in and it was all just kind of taking off from there. Awesome. So we can kind of see we just saw a little bit of the coffee on screen. Oh, nice. With the awesome bore logo. There it is. There it is. A little there's a little just kind of cruising around. You see you have a lot of bores on your property. We have a ton. Yeah. And before we fenced in our whole farm, we actually had pigs running through our coffee all the time. So it was it was like a really fitting mascot for us. Yeah, yeah. And kind of just on that note, just because I want to say this, because a lot of people ask us about our logo. And the reason that we chose the bore is that we see a bore as a tough and resilient animal. And one thing I love about Puna and the Big Island is that the people there are so resilient and so self-sufficient. And the bore wasn't originally going to be part of our logo, but we saw a picture of it in a mood board. And we're like, we have got to incorporate a bore somehow. So we went through a couple drawings of it and we're like, that is the one. This one represents our people, our land, Puna, the Big Island. Yeah, that's awesome. Why don't we look at some other pictures? Yeah, you guys brought in some probably. OK, so this is the espresso bites, which kind of came a little bit after the initial coffee. And I'd love to jump into that actually right now. So how did that? How did the espresso bites get born? Go ahead. So this one was actually it's been a long time in the making. We love playing around with food products altogether. And near our farm, there's an abandoned cacao field. And so we started harvesting cacao from there and then experimenting ourselves with making chocolate. Well, they never really turned out very good. So we thought, well, what are ways that we could kind of play around with this? So then we started adding coffee into the whole sort of mix of and we really kind of like those results. We also have friends in the chocolate industry here, too. And so we were kind of talking with them about how can we make better chocolate? Yeah, how can we make better chocolate and kind of like getting ideas and then implementing those in our little R&D sort of. But that bar we just saw has no chocolate. Exactly. So that's that's what it evolved to evolve to. All right. Well, what would happen if we just took all the cacao out of this process and just put roasted coffee beans in and said coffee people, we really taste fermentation problems very cleanly, clearly. And so our coffee, our chocolate was having terrible fermentation issues. It was coming out musty and we're like, we can't make a bar out of this. And then we're like, well, what if we take the chocolate out of a bar of chocolate and replace it with coffee? Then what would happen? And so we tried that and like the initial versions were a lot of fun. And they were very different from where they are now. But yeah, it kind of that's that's where it began. But what really started developing the concept is the first time we went to New Zealand as coffee people, we can't drink instant coffee because it's disgusting. But we bring like three pounds of our brewing equipment and all kinds of crap with us so we can hike around and still have our good coffee in the morning. Hike around with their three pounds. Yeah, we literally do. Yeah. And so and it was tedious. But we'd gotten used to that the second time we went to New Zealand, we just bought brought espresso by a little edible coffee product that we'd been prototyping as a replacement. And that's when it hit that it could be a replacement for coffee. You could just stir it in hot water and drink it like coffee in the morning and or just eat it as it is like it's a bar. You can throw it in your purse. For sure. I need a little bit between meetings. Yeah, OK. You walk into someone's office and they offer you coffee and it's not exactly what you want. You just crack open your own. So what are the exact ingredients in it? It's there's no chocolate. No chocolate. So there's coffee, cocoa butter, a little bit of sea salt, sugar and vanilla. Wow. Yeah. And a lot of people think that cocoa butter is chocolate, but it's not. Cocoa butter. If cocoa butter was chocolate, then lotions would be chocolate and cosmetics would be chocolate. But it is the fat from a cacao bean and we use it to emulsify the coffee. Otherwise, yeah, it would just be a pretty. So it's a very smooth and creamy bar of edible coffee. Yeah, it gives it a great texture. What I love about that product and obviously you guys came through our Mana Up program is you really took the cache of Hawaiian coffee, which it's so famous for and created a brand new product. Granted, you have an amazing coffee as well. But also just creating a brand new product and really innovating on original strength that we already had, especially the coffee boy. So I absolutely love it and it's delicious. Thank you. Thank you. So let's look at some other photos that you guys got in. Cool. So there's you guys. Yeah, this is shortly after we moved to the farm and we were basically living off of our land. We had a 3,000 square foot garden and we spent about 20 bucks a week on milk, just turn it to butter and cheese. And that garden's gone now because of the business we have. That kind of garden you just buy from the farmer's market now. All right. What else do we have here? So this was photos from our foray into learning about coffee and how much variety is in Hawaii. We did not understand how many different flavors and tastes that coffee could have on its own and never made sense to us to put vanilla, mac, nut, chocolate and all that. These kind of artificial flavors when coffee has such a beautiful range and our Hawaiian coffees have incredible integrity. And so we want to bring out the best in them. So yeah, that was part of our foray into learning about it. And then there's the next slide after that if you can. Kind of like wine. Yeah, so yeah, exactly. Exactly. So this is when we started learning about the similarities of coffee and chocolate and how they go through a similar processing method in order to get to their final product. And so we were really wondering like how we could push the boundaries of each. So these are all beads, coffee beans. Exactly. Yeah, you've got chocolate beans, cacao and coffee beans in different phases. So you've got the cacao pods exactly. I got the cacao pods there on the left side or actually on both sides. And then the coffee fruit, coffee cherries, what it's commonly called. And then on the top and bottom there, you can see that there's the cacao beans just raw before fermentation. And the same thing with the coffee seeds in there, the coffee beans before fermentation as well. And then the next little phase there is when they're fermented and dried. And then the next one is when they're roasted. All right, so OK, so you're not working with coffee or cacao anymore. No, not at all. OK, so now just to be clear. And how many espresso shots are in a bar of the espresso bite? In a bar, you're going to get three shots worth of espresso. That's intense. Yeah, it is. That's like the equivalent of like a venti. Definitely. Yeah, yeah, I think that's a pretty good side by side comparison. We actually just had caffeine analysis done and it's nerd factor going on here. Two point five nine milligrams per gram. And so that ends up being about two and a half to three shots of coffee. They really don't have you guys ever eaten a whole bar yourself like in one sitting and then we'll have very different from drinking coffee. Yeah, so for me, I'm actually really caffeine sensitive. So for any of you other folks out there that are caffeine sensitive, what's really nice about this bar that works for me is that it's like you get a slow drip feed of caffeine. If I drink coffee, I get shot to the moon and then I crash like two hours later. But with this, it's like long sustained energy for five to six hours. Great. Wow, all right. Well, maybe we'll have to try it sometime. Yeah, probably in the morning. Yeah, yeah, it's a good idea. For sure. So you you launch the espresso bite and then there's been obviously this incredible journey as you guys have really started focusing on the espresso bite. But we'll be hearing a lot more about that when we right after our break and look at some more cool videos of your awesome farm and some interesting video of Brandon. I'm not sure what he's doing, but I'm excited to find out about it. So we're going to be taking a break now and we'll be right back after we hear from a few messages. Thanks for being with us. Hi, guys, I'm your host, Lillian Cumick from Lillian's Vegan World. I come to you live every second Friday from three p.m. And this is the show where I talk about the plant based lifestyle and veganism. So we go through recipes, some upcoming events, information about health, regarding your health and just some ideas on how you can have a better lifestyle, eat healthier and have fun at the same time. So do join me. I look forward to seeing you and hello. Aloha, I'm Winston Welch, host of Out and About. It's a show that we have every other Monday on Think Tech Live here. We explore a variety of topics that are really interesting for organizations, events and the people who fuel them in our city, state, country and world. We've got some amazing guests on here, like all the shows at Think Tech. So if you want to catch up on stuff, tune into my show every other Monday and other shows here on Think Tech Live. It's a great place to learn about stuff, to be informed. And if you have some ideas, come on my show. Let's talk about it. See you later. And Aloha. Welcome back, everyone, to Let's Mata Up with Kelly and Brandon from Big Island Coffee Roasters and their espresso bites. We're just about to dive into what happened once you launched your espresso bite. And I'm sure everybody wanted to get their hands on it because I know I always have one in my purse. Yeah. So I literally always have my hands on it. That is so common. I love hearing that and we get that all the time, that people just keep it as a safety net in their in their purse when they get a little tired in the middle of the day. Yeah. In case of emergency, break paper. Yeah. A couple of people say that. So what happened? I mean, this isn't like a brand new product in the world. Yes. And born here in Hawaii, which we love. So where was everyone just like trying to get their hands on it? What was the kind of the growth of the of the product once launched? Well, we had like a soft launch of it, kind of prototype it for a little bit. And then we entered the high plan competition, which is a big island business plan competition. And we started going through that. And at the same time, we applied for mana up and we were so grateful to get in mana up after being on the big island for so long and to incorporate ourselves with fantastic, you know, founders and entrepreneurs and you and the high plan really helped us refine our vision and goals with espresso bites. So we ended up winning the high plan. Got twenty five thousand dollars to scale espresso bite. We now have two skews in the press and fame has been phenomenal, like people have loved it. And the growth has been like organic and people are sharing it. And so we're so excited about that. Yeah, the response has been really massive, like shockingly bigger than we thought. Yeah, it's been great. But kind of a wild ride, of course, too. Yeah. What are some of like the challenges that you're facing now? And what are some of the lessons learned through your entrepreneurial journey here? Well, we've been focused on product for eight years. We are product based people. We are artisans. We like doing things with our hands. And at some point, you just have to say, this is my product world. Now take it and then learn about the backside of the finances, you know, all of that stuff. And so our journey recently has been working with a financial consultant to help us like go back and figure out. We found out recently that we were only spending two percent of our budget annually, not budget revenue, annually on marketing. And our consultant friend was like, I'm glad I said you guys got that. Well, it is been a lot of word of mouth. You had that subscription with the coffees. Yeah, yeah. You know, maybe you haven't been as out there in an advertising way, but that's almost kind of like a cool kids club of people that know about you and how much you've grown to the quality of the product. Well, yeah, we have amazing fans. We really do. Ardent Ardent fans. Kelly's done a great job with Instagram and social media. Just putting a really, yeah, beautiful imagery and stories out there and connecting with people. And yeah, the response has just been really, really beautiful. Looking at the two percent of the of the marketing budget. Now you're looking at more strategic growth and what areas you can start spending some money to definitely. And we're looking at how we can capitalize our business and how we can grow strategically. Really, we want to grow a team of coffee lovers that can help service our customers, because as we're growing, we want to grow our people with us. Yeah. And so we are looking for people that can help us with that. Yeah. Yeah. So you said you had some photos? I do. I had some more photos. So this was some press that we got with a lot of it last year. World's Best Hotel Coffee is at the Four Seasons, Hula Lai and that's our coffee. We've been working with them for about two years. They've been fabulous partners and we've just worked to showcase Hawaiian coffee in a luxurious way. Wow. So that's a big deal. The world's best hotel coffee at the Four Seasons, Hula Lai. Yeah, I was kind of floored by the title. I mean, that's the world. Yeah. We're talking about the world here. Yeah. Yeah. Very cool. I would feel really arrogant if it wasn't somebody else that put those words there. It's kind of awesome. Yeah, what an honor. What an honor for sure. And what other photos do we have here? These have happened within the last couple of months. Espresso Bites was in Delta Sky Magazine and Big Island Coffee Roasters was in Hemisphere's United Airlines and both of them reached out to us. I don't have any idea how they found out about us, but it's cool that they did. Love it. What's that? Oh, yeah. So picture on the left there is our award-winning big, fat $25,000 check from the high plan. Which is about big islands, all big island businesses. All big islands. Yeah, only big island. Fantastic competition. Yeah, just a really great growth process for us. And then the photo on the right there is actually Kelly with... Howard Dicus. Thank you. Howard Dicus at the Mana Up showcase back in November. And Kelly did a great job on stage there, pitching her three-minute pitch to our audience for our Mana Up showcase at DFS. I've had to get through a lot. You know, being on a farm for so long, you just talk to each other or small communities. So, you know, this whole year has been a growth curve and it's been like adventures in small business. Awesome. So, kind of what's next? What's next for you guys? I know you just came out with the sea salt. Yeah, yeah. So we have two skews of the espresso bites. We got the classic, made with 100% ka'u coffee. And then the sea salt version, made with 100% Maui coffee. And then we also added a little bit of red ala A.S. sea salt from Molokai as well. Really nice, salty, sweet, crunchy factor with that too. So, we definitely have more skews coming out. We have a whole bunch of ideas and it's just a matter of time for implementation. We'll likely do a sugar-free version. Maybe considering a decaf, but we've got one that we really want, that we've wanted to make for a long time. We just need to figure out how to make it. Yeah, and one with milk, of course. Yeah, one that we call a flat white. Basically, it's like white chocolate on the top and then the base. Hipster. Yeah. Hipster. Yep. So, in terms of growth off the island, I know you folks went to Expo West with Mana Up and Anaheim, which is the largest natural products expo in the world. Yeah. And what kind of feedback did you guys get there in terms of the excitement from outside of Hawaii? Yeah, a lot of... Well, I think the most common thing was, wow, I can't believe this isn't chocolate. It was definitely one, but the main thing was, I haven't seen anything like this on the show, right? And you went to that show and it was just massive, right? Tons of tons of products. So it feels really great to have a unique product that stands out amongst a crowd that big and that's where people are trying to showcase innovation in the first place. So for people to come back to us and say, I haven't seen anything like this around, it's really special. Yeah. It's confirming our suspicions. The iron's hot. Yeah, the iron's hot, exactly. So from that, we're just gonna kind of keep writing on that momentum a bit. We're still in touch with distributors and grocery stores on the West Coast. That's kind of our first target as far as moving to the mainland goes. And then we'll probably also look to Japan as well. And obviously we're gonna join you and Brittany, I'm on an up crew for the Hong Kong. Hong Kong, yeah. Do it all over again. Exactly, do it all over again. Yeah, so that should be fun too and I'm really curious to see what happens with the response there. Yeah, so I know we have a couple more pictures in a video. Let's show the video now. Brandon doing whatever Brandon's doing and he can explain this. Yeah, sure. So that is a bunch of coffee cherry. That's what we call it. It's the coffee fruit and what I'm doing is I'm sorting out anything that is underripe, overripe, or just kind of rotten, gross looking. Basically we go for really high quality fruit. And you treat coffee like a fruit because that's what it is. And so if you pick it when it's ripe red, that nice deep red color that you can see there, the table is just full of that stuff. So you're not gonna have good coffee unless you pick really, really well. Unless it's hand sorted. That definitely helps too. Yeah, cool. All right, so what's the, what are the last two photos here? Ooh. Yeah, this has been some of the response on social media and I put together this collage and it's just been so fantastic. I'm most excited about this. Seriously amazing, so good. Just had another one today. Me after one bite, I dancing. And a friend of ours took a bunch of our bars to China with her when she was traveling and she was like, these saved my life in China. We'll have to bring a bunch. Actually, we'll have to, but we're fine. We'll be okay. You're covered. Great, okay, last photo. This is just our website. A lot of people ask us where they can pick them up. And so if you go to bigislandcoffeeroasters.com forward slash buy, or just bigislandcoffeeroasters.com and then look for this page, then we have a list of places where you can buy it. I love it. And I know that with our partnership with DFS, you folks are at a lot of the airports. So if anyone's about to take off and need to grab a little bit, or they just landed, they need to grab a little bit to swing by the DFS store. Yep, we're at all the gift stores in Honolulu, Kona and Hilo. Okay, cool, yeah. So I guess just with our remaining time here, I'd love for you guys to share just kind of some quick tips. Like, when I used to be more involved with wine, I used to kind of do these like quick tips for the average consumer that you guys are such experts. And you actually have the certification. Yeah, we actually, but I'm a licensed Arabica Q-Grader, which is like being a Somalian. I had to go through an arduous test to achieve this. And now I can be a judge in competitions. And now Brandon and I both have our level two SEA certifications in Brewing, Roasting, Green Coffee and Barista. And he just got his certification for Espresso Tech. So we can service our clients. This has all been totally organic. This is what like our clients, they want certifications. And so this way when we teach other people, we can provide them a certificate once we become licensed. So we're doing this to help our clients. So what are some key insights or things you can share for us average coffee drinkers that may help enhance our experience? Sure, sure. So one thing I would say is if you can, buy whole bean and grind right before you brew, that helps out a lot as far as getting a quality cup of coffee. The other thing would be using hot water. Oftentimes like regular Mr. Coffee kind, coffee maker, they'll be running a little bit cold. And so you don't get a good extraction that way. So I recommend always having like 200 degree water is really good. 195 to 205 is really good. So having a hot enough water. And I'm gonna interject here for just a second and say we're actually building an email series for people interested in learning about coffee brewing. And we are just finishing that up. And so if you're interested to know more about this and we've interjected a lot of humor and links and fun links and like videos in there, go to our website, sign up for our newsletter and everybody on the list is going to have access to the series. And that's bigislandcoffeeroasters.com? Yeah. All right. Well, thank you guys for being on the show today. Yeah, thank you. It's our first show. It's so awesome, so great. And I'd like to thank all of you for being here. Let's mona up. We'll be on every other Tuesday at 11 o'clock. And so thank you for joining us on our first show and we look forward to having many more of our product entrepreneurs sharing their stories all from here in Hawaii. Thank you. Thank you.