Kauai Coffee Co. has told state and county leaders that it is being forced to lay off the 136 employees of its 3,100-acre Garden Isle farm, Hawaii’s largest coffee grower.
The company said that layoffs to ensure an orderly operational shutdown are expected to begin March 14 and continue through March 28, when its land lease is scheduled to expire in an apparent end to high-stakes lease negotiations with the Colorado-based landowner.
“As you have heard and read in the newspapers, Mr. Chad Brue, chief executive officer of Brue Baukol Capital Partners, has announced that (Brue Baukol) will not renew or extend Kauai Coffee Company LLC’s lease of any of the land for the coffee orchard or processing plant currently operated by KCC,” attorneys for the farm operator said Monday in a notice required under federal law when mass layoffs are intended. “Pursuant to the Worker Adjustment and Retraining Notification Act, we regretfully notify you that KCC is
being forced out of business and all KCC employees will be terminated.”
The layoff notice was delivered to the state Department of Labor and Industrial Relations, Gov. Josh Green, Kauai Mayor Derek Kawakami and Honolulu Mayor Rick Blangiardi.
Denver-based Brue Baukol, a real estate investment firm that bought the land under the Kalaheo farm three years ago, said in a statement that its intention is to retain all Kauai Coffee employees who wish to
continue working.
“We look forward to maintaining and evolving coffee operations and the experiences of both employees and customers,” James Priestley, a Brue Baukol vice president, said in a statement this week. “Brue
Baukol Capital Partners is committed to preserving and evolving the legacy created by Kauai Coffee, maintaining the benefits it provides to employees, the local community and the
local economy.”
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In December, Brue Baukol executives told the Honolulu Star-Advertiser that the company was committed to keeping Kauai Coffee open and was exploring ways to preserve, improve, or potentially manage the business itself.
Kauai Coffee, an offshoot of now-defunct McBryde Sugar Co. that began in 1987, has been owned since 2011 by a U.S. affiliate of Italian firm Massimo Zanetti Beverage Group, which bought the farm business but not the land from former McBryde parent Alexander &Baldwin Inc. for $14 million.
Brue Baukol bought the land under the farm in
2022 from A&B as part of a $74 million deal for 18,900 acres of primarily conservation and agricultural land on Kauai.
The landlord said it began discussions to renew Kauai Coffee’s lease nearly two years ago and proposed terms consistent with the existing agreement.
Massimo, one of the world’s top five coffee roasters, has said that it had increased Kauai Coffee annual revenue by about 209% to roughly $25 million from 2011 to 2025, and that it wanted to continue the operation.
The farm, above Kauai’s south shore between Hanapepe and Poipu, produces roughly 2 million pounds of coffee a year from about
4 million trees that include eight different varieties. Kauai Coffee is also the
biggest coffee grower in the United States, and attracts more than 350,000 people to its visitor center annually.
The International Longshore &Warehouse Union, which represents 69 Kauai Coffee workers, expressed frustration and concern over uncertainty expressed by employees and how they are being treated.
“These workers did not create this situation,” ILWU Local 142 President Chris West said in a statement. “They grow, harvest, roast, package, and distribute Kauai Coffee — a fully integrated agricultural operation built by local people over decades. Yet today, those same workers are being forced to prepare for
an uncertain future and
possible layoffs.”
West also said that the union will work with community leaders and elected officials to ensure the situation is handled transparently and in a way that protects local jobs, local
agriculture, and the long-term interests of Kauai.
