Kaua'i Coffee expansion brewing

By Jan TenBruggencate
Advertiser Kaua'i Bureau

PORT ALLEN, Kaua'i — Alexander & Baldwin Inc.'s Kaua'i Coffee Co. hopes to open a chain of coffee shops aimed at marketing both the firm's coffee and sugar products from its HC&S sugar plantation on Maui.

Barbara Watts, retail operations supervisor, says Kaua'i Coffee hopes to establish a shop on Maui — part of a strategy to ensure the company's long-term success. Jan TenBruggencate • The Honolulu Advertiser

"The Port Allen cafe is our premier beverage and food outlet — the prototype, if you will, for others we hope to open on the island" and on Maui, said Kaua'i Coffee president Frank Kiger. "This is part of our strategy to ensure Kaua'i Coffee Company's long-term success," he said.

Coffee growers on other islands say it's a good strategy.

"It's an important option. I'd like to have a couple of spots on O'ahu, visible to tourists as well as locals," said Coby Barbata, director of sales for Coffees of Hawai'i's Moloka'i Coffee Plantation. The firm's 500 acres in crop make it the state's second-largest coffee plantation after Kaua'i Coffee's 3,500 acres.

The Moloka'i coffee operation already has a café and a coffee gift shop at its headquarters in Kualapu'u, as well as the coffee shop at the Moloka'i Airport in Ho'olehua.

A retail operation — or several of them — can be important familiarizing people with the brand, Barbata said. Inter Island Petroleum recently bought Coffees of Hawai'i and hopes to expand its marketing efforts shortly, he said.

"We do have a coffee shop, but we have a different kind of concept. We went with the White House," he said, proposing that Hawai'i-grown coffee be exclusively used at the executive mansion in Washington.

"We're working on a couple of new ideas this year. You could take Kona coffee to Texas, to New York, and serve it in the best restaurants. Affluent people won't care what it costs if it's gourmet quality coffee," he said.

Nagasaki said retail shops are a good idea, but he worries that one-brand retail outlets could undermine a statewide effort to jointly market Hawai'i coffee. Hawai'i is the only state in the nation that grows coffee commercially, and Nagasaki said he'd like a stronger campaign to "buy American."

Coffee is grown commercially on Kaua'i, O'ahu, Moloka'i, Maui and the Big Island, and the industry as a whole has been pushing a position that all would benefit from a patriotic approach to purchases of java.

Still, coffee shops and gift shops associated with specific coffee farms or specific brands are a common feature in Kona, and elsewhere. Kaua'i Coffee has a small coffee museum and visitor center that sells coffee and branded products from a site within the coffee fields, near the firm's factory at Numila, east of Port Allen.

Barbara Watts, Kaua'i Coffee's retail operations supervisor, said the company hopes soon to establish a retail shop or cafe on Maui as well, to take advantage of the sister product, Maui Brand Sugar. The HC&S plantation produces two varieties of retail sugar: a large-crystal brown sugar called Premium Turbinado, which still contains some of the natural molasses that is refined out of table sugar; and a very pale Hawaiian raw sugar called Plantation White, which contains a very small amount of molasses.

Both Watts and Coffees of Hawai'i's Barbata concede that their brands might have suffered from the immature flavors of the first few crops, and they're trying to overcome that.

"The coffee tree has a life of 70 to 80 years, and some people claim you don't get the best flavor for about 10 years," Barbata said. Both plantations are now over that, with mature coffee plantations producing full tastes.

"Our coffee is so much different than it used to be," Watts said.

Reach Jan TenBruggencate at jant@honoluluadvertiser.com or (808) 245-3074.