Our Story
Aloha, we are Armando and Karina Rodriguez, founders of Aloha Star Coffee Farms.
We are located in the Honomalino Acres subdivision, in South Kona, on the Big Island of Hawai'i (Hawaii island), on the West slopes of the Mauna Loa Volcano, within the famous Kona Coffee Belt.
This region is known to produce one of the best coffee beans worldwide. The combination of elevation, temperature, rainfall, and the rich volcanic soil create the perfect conditions that allow us to grow our high-quality coffee beans.
Our first farm has a size of 13 acres, which stands between 1,900 to 2,000 feet above sea level. When the property was purchased back in 2004, it was a macadamia nut orchard with 1,200 trees already producing nuts. In spring 2013, after almost ten years of traveling from Phoenix, Arizona to Hawaii to take care of the macadamia nuts orchard, Armando left the management of his small construction company to his brother, and we moved here, making this piece of paradise our permanent home.
Our original after moving here was to sell Mexican food with the help of Armando’s mother, Dona Lydia, but that plan did not work as expected and we decided to begin planting coffee, thanks to the motivation of our friends, Godofredo and Matilde Miranda, a couple from El Salvador who have been coffee farmers here on the Big Island for several years.
They gave us about 200 “keiki” coffee from their farm for free, just to help us startup our coffee plantation. We started planting these trees at the end of 2013, between the rows of our macadamia nut trees, following the recommendations of “Don Godo” (as his family and friends call him). That’s how everything started.
Our farm is our home, living on our farm allow us to ensure that we are only producing the highest quality of our crop. We have continued planting more trees every year, most of them developed from seeds. We currently have 8,000+ trees planted, and we continue to develop new keiki trees in our nursery.
Then, in the summer of 2021 we had the opportunity to extend the size of our farm with the purchase of a 5-acre lot, which is located about 1 mile away from our main Estate/home here in South Kona, allowing us to increase our farm’s production.
As an Estate farm, we continuously take care of our coffee trees. We carefully manage every step of the production process, from beginning to end. We are on the field picking the coffee cherries alongside our seasonal pickers. We personally process our beans, manage the milling (removal the parchment), grading/sorting of the green beans, roasting, packaging, and shipping. Learn more.
Since we began this amazing project almost ten years ago, we have been involved in a continuous learning path that has allowed us to implement the best practices of the coffee industry for growing, harvesting, processing, milling, and roasting specialty coffee, not only in the State of Hawaii, but Worldwide. That hard work has paid off, as our farm has received awards and recognitions for the premium quality and great flavor of our beans.
This project is the result of hard work and effort, of overcoming a lot of challenges, mistakes, and setbacks. Done with love and respect to the land, to the people who help us, to our community; with commitment to our values, and lots of faith. We are very grateful for the opportunity to be here, working together with our family. We are very proud to be 100% Kona coffee farmers, and humbled for the opportunity that this work gives us to show our children and grandchildren that we can reach our goals and dreams through honest, hard work. And most importantly, that we can break cycles, that being Latino immigrants is not an obstacle to be successful, to dream big, to be proud of our heritage, of who we are and where we come from. In return, we continue doing our best every day to represent and honor the Aloha spirit of Hawaii, and to help preserve and elevate the name of the authentic 100% Kona coffee.
Mahalo for your preference and support!
Armando, Karina and our Ohana.
Why the name change from King’s Cup to our current name Aloha Star coffee?
Originally when we launched our brand in 2015, we named it King’s Cup 100% Kona coffee. Named after the Hawaiian King Kamehameha the III, we wanted a brand that could honor Hawaii and its ancestors. In the Summer of 2019, we got a communication from the USPTO (US Patent and Trademark Office) informing us our trademark application for the name Kings Cup 100% Kona coffee was not approved, since there was another trademark already registered on the US Mainland with a very similar name, which might lead to confusion of the brands by the customers. This setback implied starting over, finding a new name, changing our image and branding, reprinting labels, merchandise, etc. a lot of work and money lost. We did not give up; this was a great learning experience about how to turn a problem into an opportunity.
We started brainstorming ideas of a name that could be easily remembered and associated to Hawaii. We chose the name Aloha Star. Why? Hawaii is the Aloha state, and at night our sky is clear, we can see the stars and the constellations almost year-round from our farm. We learned that about 95% of the stars visible from the planet Earth can be seen from the top of the Mauna Kea volcano, here on the Big Island. The brightest star at nighttime in the Hawaiian sky is Sirius (also known as Sirius A or the Dog Star) which is part of the Canis Major constellation. Just after sunset, as the sky gets darker, Sirius displays its light and the view from our farm is just amazing. We named our coffee “Aloha Star”, in honor to the Sirius star. In January 2020, after getting the USPTO’s approval, we launched our new website, with the new name Aloha Star 100% Kona Coffee.
Our image and branding are the only things that have changed. Everything else remains the same: Our commitment to the authenticity, highest quality, and freshness of our products does not have compromises. The satisfaction of our customer is our main priority.