MELE

Hula Daddy Kona Coffee began with an 11-acre cow pasture in Kona and a decision to grow coffee. Lee and Karen Paterson bought the property in 2002, brought in a local agronomist, and planted 7,000 coffee trees. Their first harvest came three years later, and their own account is candid: the coffee needed work. That makes the early farm story worth reading if you're curious about what goes into producing a bag of Kona coffee. Hula Daddy grew from those first plantings into a business that grows coffee and handles its own roasting, with the founders documenting changes to farming and production along the way.