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| Retirement perks (Fall 2005) |
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A retiree couple gets their boost from top-grade Kona coffee
Jim and Anita Robinette were living the textbook retirement dream. They’d each built successful careers in business - Jim jetted from boardroom to boardroom selling software to big companies, while Anita invented and manufactured sampling equipment for water and soil tests. The two met in 1996 and decided to retire together to Hawaii’s Big Island, settle in for some peace and quiet, revel in lazy mornings on the lanai, and enjoy a bit of travel when the notion suited them.
“We bought a nice house in a gated community and all that stuff,” says Jim. “But Anita and I are accustomed to working pretty hard. After we fixed up the house and traveled around a bit, we looked around and said, 'what do we do now?'"
Certainly the last place they expected to be drawn to was a farm. Years before, Anita had fled a small farm town in Ohio for the thrill of California. And as a boy, Jim couldn’t wait to leave his family’s ranch in the Oregon desert.
“I was born and raised on a farm and frankly couldn’t wait to get off of it,” he laughs, recalling long days of haying. “There was too much work and it didn’t pay much.”
So they were as surprised as anyone when they decided to sell their new home in an exclusive area on the Kona Coast and clear a 24-acre slope choked with guinea grass that towered over their heads. They were captivated by the view of the Pacific. They were charmed by the ancient rock walls built by the workers who had farmed the land for the Hawaiian kings. And they were intrigued by Kona coffee, the elegant result of a Guatemalan strain of coffee trees crossed with the sunny mornings, shady afternoons, and rainy summers that grace the Kona Coast.
Anita’s start-up instincts kicked into gear. Jim’s marketing radar started turning. After all, Kona beans are an exclusive product in a world awash in cheap coffee. The district’s 600 coffee farms yield just three million pounds of green coffee beans per year, barely enough to supply the U.S. market for about four hours or one brunch per season.
“We approached this the way we saw people develop their boutique wineries,” says Anita. If Hawaii’s Kona Coast is the Napa Valley of the coffee world, the Robinettes’ Aloha Island Farms set out to produce the roasted, caffeinated counterpart to Napa’s finest Cabernets—a coffee that is distinctive, rare, and exquisite.
Smell the flowers
But even while learning the coffee business, finding a master roaster, and planting 14,000 coffee trees, Jim and Anita took time to smell the flowers. “It’s just so peaceful here,” Anita sighs. “All you hear is the wind. And when the crop is in full bloom, the whole mountainside smells of gardenias.”
That joy pervades the operation. From its ‘30s-style logo to its location in the village that inspired the 1933 hit song “My Little Grass Shack in Kaleakehua,” Aloha Island celebrates Old Hawaii, the cross of exotic and All-American, nostalgic and timeless.
Cutting-edge
While some elements of Aloha Island Farms conjure ukulele-inflected jazz and vintage steamships, other aspects of the operation date back farther, to the 19th century roots of the Kona coffee industry. Cherry—the ripe fruit that contains the beans—is still hand-harvested. Beans are still dried in the sun on broad platforms called hoshidanas. The roast is still judged by the sounds the beans make when they crack. But another side of Aloha Island Farms is right on the cutting edge.
Jim delights in hooking his digital camera up to his computer to shoot product photos for www.alohaislandcoffee.com, the company’s online store. There’s certainly nothing old-fashioned about distribution deals with high-end retailers like Williams-Sonoma. And Aloha Island’s two coffee boutiques in Beverly Hills are hardly little grass shacks.
In just three years, Aloha Island Farms has combined Old Hawaii with a fresh look at marketing to build a premium coffee brand.
That’s precisely the way Jim and Anita Robinette have decided to enjoy their retirement. Ever since a local kahu, or pastor, blessed their farm, they’ve been happily tending to their dream. And like their new 1,800-square-foot house on the orchard’s edge, they’re making it just the size to suit them.
“We’re not interested in becoming huge and buying cherry and selling containers to some customer in Japan,” says Jim, preparing to hitch a mower to his tractor.
“Our friends think we’re nuts,” he grins. “But I find looking out over here and knowing I had a hand in making it happen to be one of the most satisfying things in my life. It’s hard work, but it’s healthy work.”
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