Hawaiian Chocolate Creates Fun Kauai Vacation
Macadamia Nuts and Chocolate Spice Hawaii Adventure
Feb 27, 2009
Founder Koa Kahili, an island man, married and the father of two young sons, isn't simply talking ecospeak in hopes of tingling the ears of those eager to jump on board the "green" bus. He's taking very calculated steps-and a calculated risk, one might say-to educate, employ and empower the people of Hawaii, through his nascent founded company, Garden Island Chocolate.
Seven Varieties of Cocoa
Kahili grows seven different varieties of organic cocoa on his island farm, which he then cultivates and ultimately turns into chocolate. It takes three to four years for a cocoa plant to bear fruit so the farm to market process isn't exactly a thrill ride. But that's just the way he likes it.
"One solution to the word-wide financial crisis is growing your own food," says Kahili. "We are focused on resource management conservation, knowing full well that we have a limited supply of soil, water and air. Ecosystem preservation and restoration, not rapid turnover, creates great chocolate."
It also creates jobs.
Locals Find Work
A good part of Kahili's vision is focused on developing his cocoa farm and business as a way to nourish generations on Kauai for years to come. "Cacao enables us the opportunity to become closer to the land, to understand the complexities of the natural environment and how we fit into the web of life." He's created jobs for farmers that help in cultivation, and workers at co-ops and natural food markets on the island where Garden Island Chocolate bars are sold.
All Island Resources
To further support local agriculture resources, Kahili suffuses his chocolate bars with tasty ingredients grown on the island: organic vanilla beans, organic macadamia nuts and organic coconut. He likes to think of the final product as a "dark, rich taste of paradise."
Paradise, at least how Kahili has reimagined it, did not come easy. After graduation from the University of Colorado at Boulder and the receiving a masters at the University of Hawaii, Kahili married and subsequently spent time with his wife living off the land. "Living off the land is an education unparalleled by any university," he says, recalling days wild-harvesting avocados, coconuts and bananas and nights building fires and listening to the surf.
It wasn't until the couple eventually moved into a tiny cottage off the beach and a neighbor presented him with pods from a cocoa tree that his future clicked.
"I remembered my mother's love of cocoa and the robust cocoa tree of a friend on the big island and I knew this was the universe telling me something," Kahili muses.
Chocolate's Role in the Future
His days and nights are now spent handcrafting his chocolate bars and he believes "we are just scratching the surface in terms of chocolate being used as a medicine and sacrament." It is, however, in light of the current global crisis, what cocoa and chocolate mean to the future that ultimately gives him satisfaction in his work and pause for reflection. "Chocolate is the current slow food, organic, fair trade movement that is facilitating the awareness of where our food is really coming from and how it was treated along the way."
References: gardenislandchocolate.com; and personal interviews with the author.
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