These companies buy from local farms, manufacture on-island, and sell to customers 2,500 miles away. Those three facts are connected.
Hawaiʻi imports somewhere between 85 and 90 percent of the food its residents eat. The figure usually starts a conversation about growing more — more acreage in production, more farmers, more local produce on local shelves. All of it necessary.
Here is the part that gets left out: a farmer needs a buyer. A processing line needs enough volume to justify running. Local agriculture doesn’t expand because people want it to. It expands when there is a business on the other end placing orders big enough to matter — and placing them again next year.
That is what a growing Hawaiʻi product company is. And the larger its market, the larger those orders get. A brand selling only at local farmers markets can support a farmer for a season. But a brand selling in California, New York, and Japan can support a farm for much longer
Mana Up, in partnership with Ulupono Initiative, works with companies building both halves of that equation at once. Here are a few of them, and what each one is actually doing to make Hawaiʻi less dependent on what arrives by container ship.
Grow the Ingredient Yourself: Kō Hana Rum
Most rum in the world is made from molasses — the byproduct left over after industrial sugar refining. Kō Hana doesn’t buy molasses. It doesn’t buy sugar. It grows the cane.
Founded by Jason Brand and Robert Dawson and based in Kunia on Oʻahu, Kō Hana is a farm-to-bottle agricole distillery working exclusively with heirloom Hawaiian sugarcane — varieties brought to the islands by Polynesian voyagers roughly a thousand years ago. The company grows more than 30 named varieties, each genetically tested for authenticity, making it the largest conservator of native Hawaiian sugarcane in the world. Cane is hand-harvested year-round and pressed to juice at the distillery.
That is agricultural land in active production, on Oʻahu, tied to a product with a global market. Kō Hana joined Mana Up’s first cohort in 2018 and became one of the first two investments from Mana Up’s $6.3 million venture fund. Kō Hana used the capital to add 220 acres of Oʻahu farmland and expand mainland distribution. USA Today’s 10Best has since named it one of the top rum distilleries in the country.
A brand selling only at local farmers markets can support a farmer for a season. But a brand selling in California, New York, and Japan can support a farm for much longer
Buy Direct from Hawaiʻi Farmers: Mānoa Chocolate
When Dylan Butterbaugh launched Mānoa Chocolate in 2010, Hawaiʻi had cacao growers but almost no local processing capacity. Beans were leaving the state to be made into chocolate somewhere else. He built the missing link — a bean-to-bar factory in Kailua that buys directly from Hawaiʻi farms, with no brokers between the orchard and the roaster.
That structure is the point. Direct trade means the company can pay farmers directly, know exactly where each lot came from, and give growers a reason to keep planting. Mānoa now works with orchards across Kona, Hilo, and the Hāmākua coast, including a multi-generational farm on the windward slopes of Maunakea that doubles as a cacao research site.
The market for the result is not local. Mānoa’s first Hawaiʻi Island single-origin bar took best tasting bar at the 2017 Salon du Chocolat in Paris, one of the largest chocolate festivals in the world. Hawaiian cacao is now among the most sought-after and expensive in existence — which is precisely what makes it worth a Hawaiʻi farmer’s time to grow.
Keep the Entire Chain On-Island: Ahualoa Family Farms
Ahualoa Family Farms in Honokaʻa grows, processes, and packages macadamia-based products entirely on Hawaiʻi Island. Sourcing from roughly 75 local farmers and roasting in small batches at their farm, Nuthouse Kitchen & Shop, and a restored historic factory.
Vertical integration at that level is rare and expensive. It also means every stage of value — growing, cracking, roasting, packaging, selling — stays inside Hawaiʻi’s economy instead of leaving with the raw nut and coming back as a finished good. A member of Mana Up’s Cohort 11, Ahualoa is the clearest example in the group of what import replacement looks like when it works.
Protect the Manufacturing You Already Have: Maebo Noodle Factory
Self-sufficiency isn’t only about farms. It is also about whether Hawaiʻi still has the facilities to turn raw ingredients into finished products — and a lot of that capacity has quietly disappeared over the past few decades.
Maebo Noodle Factory in Hilo is 76 years old and on its fourth generation of family ownership, known statewide for its One-Ton Chips and fresh saimin and chow fun noodles. The current generation is expanding the business rather than winding it down, adding products like the One-Ton Chip Cookie and joining Cohort 11 to build out distribution. Every year that factory keeps running is a year Hawaiʻi retains manufacturing infrastructure it could not easily rebuild.
The same is true of Yick Lung, the century-old Honolulu snack brand behind Nibb-its and li hing plum and mango tablets, now being rebuilt by Derek Ching with modernized packaging, expanded distribution, and a growing e-commerce operation.
Build the Farm Network as You Grow: Waimea Herb Company
A Native Hawaiian, family-owned tea company based in Waimea on Hawaiʻi Island, Waimea Herb Company works closely with regenerative farmers to blend herbal and black teas from botanicals grown in the island’s volcanic soil. It began not as a business plan but as an afterschool program rooted in Hawaiian healing traditions.
What makes it relevant here is the direction of the relationship: as the company’s orders grow, so does the acreage its partner farms have reason to plant. The same dynamic is at work at Wailua Granola Co. on Kauaʻi, where founder Taleea Carvalho builds five small-batch flavors around fresh Kauaʻi coconut and raw Kauaʻi honey, and at Big Island Coffee Roasters, a Cohort 2 alum that pays Hawaiʻi family farms directly for its beans.
What "Going Global" Actually Looks Like
None of the above works if the products only sell within a market of 1.4 million residents. The export side is not a nice-to-have — it is what makes the local sourcing financially survivable.
House of Mana Up puts island-made products on shelves at Royal Hawaiian Center, Ward Village, and Kahului Airport, and ships them nationwide online. Mana Up’s Aloha Market pop-ups have taken more than 60 Hawaiʻi vendors to New York City, Venice Beach in Los Angeles, and Tokyo’s Haneda Airport, each setting attendance and sales records in its market.
The aggregate results are measurable. Mana Up has now worked with more than 105 Hawaiʻi-based companies. Alumni generate $135 million in combined annual revenue and have created more than 1,120 jobs across the islands — and critically, 74 percent still manufacture their products in Hawaiʻi while 62 percent source their ingredients locally. These are not companies that grew by moving production somewhere cheaper. They grew while keeping the hard part here.
The Ulupono Connection
Ulupono Initiative has invested since 2009 in the systems that make it possible for Hawaiʻi to feed and sustain itself more fullyIts support for the DA BUX Double Up Food Bucks program, which doubles SNAP purchasing power for locally grown produce, helped secure a $1.5 million annual state allocation that unlocked $8.5 million in federal funds — projected to generate close to $25 million in local food sales over three years.
That is demand moving toward Hawaiʻi farms from one direction. The companies above represent demand moving toward those same farms from another. House of Mana Up’s partnership with Ulupono reflects a shared conclusion: buying local and selling global are not competing strategies. Each one funds the other.
Where to Shop
House of Mana Up is the retail arm of Mana Up, a Hawaiʻi-based consumer product accelerator. Its partnership with Ulupono Initiative supports the growth of locally made products that strengthen Hawaiʻi’s food and consumer economy.
Find a rotating selection of Hawaiʻi-made food, pantry, and home goods at its retail locations and online.
