Posted on: Friday, February 21, 2003

Lingle to press White House to use local coffee

By Sean Hao
Advertiser Staff Writer

As Gov. Linda Lingle makes her rounds in Washington next week, a small but significant item on her agenda is to persuade the White House to serve only Hawai'i-grown coffee to its guests.

Lingle, who arrived in the capital yesterday, is toting a basket with a selection of coffee grown on the Big Island, O'ahu, Moloka'i, Maui and Kaua'i along with a letter "suggesting this would be a nice thing to do since we're the only state in the union that grows coffee commercially," said Steve Bretschneider, chief marketing officer for the state Department of Business, Economic Development and Tourism.

It's not clear what kind of coffee the White House now serves — a phone call seeking information was not returned yesterday. The odds are it's from South America, which produces most of the world's coffee. Wherever it's from, it can't compare with Hawai'i's brew, said Katherine Patton, president of the Hilo Coffee Mill.

"We sell them all, but probably the best coffee is from Hawai'i," she said. "They should use Hawai'i coffee. This is the United States, after all."

The push to get Hawai'i coffee into the White House came from officials at DBEDT, who are now working for a Republican governor who presumably believes she's in a good position to ask a favor from a Republican administration.

Hawai'i's 700 coffee farms generate nearly $20 million a year in sales, according to the Hawai'i Agricultural Statistics Service.