Latest / Hawaii Travel Podcast by Hawaii’s Best: Plan a Better Hawaii Vacation / Making Banana Ice Cream with Banan on Oahu - Following Your Dreams with Matt Hong of Banan

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Making Banana Ice Cream with Banan on Oahu - Following Your Dreams with Matt Hong of Banan · Hawaii Travel Podcast by Hawaii’s Best: Plan a Better Hawaii Vacation

• 0:00
  Matt Hong: What are you doing? You know, thinking that Hey guys, I'm not gonna do let's go any more but I'm actually gonna try turn bananas into ice cream for a living yeah with three of my other friends and they're like, are you crazy as one of the co founders have been on mat and the rest of the founders took this vision of turning bananas into ice cream a reality. And on today's episode, we're going to learn about the hard work behind what has made banane what it is today and how they are expanding across the globe and on a wahoo so stay tuned. This is an episode if you have a dream, or a vision that you're not quite sure is going to work out. You're gonna want to listen to this episode and here's some of the encouragement and hard work that went into making the non
• 0:48
  Unknown Speaker: a reality. Let's cue the intro.
• 0:52
  Unknown Speaker: Aloha. Welcome to Hawaii's Best podcasts. Learn the stories behind Hawaii's Best experiences influence years and businesses discover everything that makes Hawaii the Aloha state. And now your host, Brian Murphy, I can't wait for you to hear more about the story behind banane. And like I mentioned in the intro, if you have a dream, if you have a vision or something that is making your heartbeat fast, I want you to listen to this because Matt had a different track a different path that he was going for, and he made this pivot. And I don't want to give it all away, I want him to be able to tell the story of how banane started, but go ahead before we jump in, hit that subscribe button and drop a review in iTunes. It really helps the show and for other people to be able to find the show who are interested in travel and stories behind the businesses in Hawaii and also explore the culture of Hawaii. So thanks for considering to do that. And right now we're going to jump on in and talk story with Matt from the
• 2:03
  Matt Hong: Thanks for joining us today on Hawaii's Best How you doing, man? Thanks for having me. I'm doing fantastic. I just spent pretty much the past few days on the neighbor island of Molokai and did some surfing and some diving a whole bunch of fun stuff. Oh man looking into that a little bit. Yeah, absolutely. And then we're also I'm just trying to get a bunch of work done before I head off on Friday with a couple of my partners to go to Japan. Open up a second store over there. Oh, like, like a storefront. Yeah. storefront. Oh, wow. Okay, now we got a lot to talk about. Yeah. Well, tell me a little bit about yourself. Yeah, so a little bit about me. I'm one of the founders of banane. So I grew up here on a wall who grew up surfing majority of my life. My father taught me how to surf once High School in a while, who ended up going to college and UC Santa Cruz. Okay, still did some more surfing over there. Yeah, of course and had such a beautiful time in California. Towards the end of my career over there, in my university studies, we started thinking about entrepreneurial ideas that then brought me back home overall. Yeah. Yeah. Was that kind of in your blood growing up that entrepreneurial mindset or No, not at all. I mean, there's snippets of it of you know, I used to have fun making logos as a kid and things like that. Yeah. But never when I was younger, did I really think I was gonna run my own business? I guess I didn't think too much about the future. Okay. For a while, you know, I wanted to be a doctor when I was studying at university.
• 3:35
  Bryan Murphy: Is that what you went to school for?
• 3:37
  Matt Hong: Yeah. So I studied biology, like molecular biology, right? And towards the end and worked in a lab for two years doing like stem cell research. And then, at the very end of that, I had this entrepreneurial Spark, and so did a lot of my friends who are I grew up with over here. And that's when we started talking about a bunch of different ideas, none that had to do with banana ice cream. Yeah, thing like that. Yeah. Uh, but nonetheless, ideas to talk about and it got us fired up.
• 22:56
  Unknown Speaker: Yes, and yeah, yeah, I
• 22:57
  Matt Hong: mean, there's a lot of went into this business. Yeah, like the first year and pretty much the first year is, is us for we're in the truck every single day we started introducing employees a little before a year out. Um, but yeah, there's just been a lot of hard work there. So how did relationships in Japan come about and those opportunities? Yeah, Hawaii has an interesting relationship with Japan. Or Yes, Japan to Hawaii. They it's this amazing affection? Yeah. between our cultures. And the Japanese love Hawaii. And so they have like a they hold like a Hawaii fair picture and a handful of Hawaii. Okay. And so we're invited to one. Yeah. And the company that was hosting it was kind enough to you know, market is really hard on national news coverage. And yeah, so we just had a huge success at this Hawaii fair, and partners who we worked with for that. So this big company partnership with us. A few individuals, they ended up being the ones to help us take the brand over to Hawaii. And we had some good chemistry in the beginning. And they were still working things out. Yeah, things aren't picture. Perfect. And sure. It's interesting. You know, it's our first go of trying to control the brand. Yeah. And the product from afar, and make sure that people are putting as much love into it as us. Yeah. And so there's things that we're super happy about, like their supply chain is awesome. Yeah, for the most part, like they're bananas, we got to check out where they're coming from in the Philippines, because you can't have local bananas in Japan, okay. But the shift kind of focused more towards using really good agricultural practices, which these guys do. And also labor practices, because as you start sourcing agriculture to take off on a developing nation, yeah, there's some dark stories. And that was really important to us that we, you know, at least did our due diligence to check it out a bit and then there's still more to investigate and check out and improve because we need Talking about your brand is more than just Hey, make sure you get the colors right. Oh, it's more than the recipe right? It's it's, it's the philosophy. Yeah. Like, well, where's the stuff being grown? Right? How's it being grown? Something that we're always trying to improve on even over here in Hawaii? Yeah. Cool. Yeah. So I mean, that kind of answers just a little bit about Hey, what's next then? Does that when are those stores open? is a multiple stores are so we have one storm that's set to open in Osaka, Japan. Yeah. March 14. Okay. And then we're also building out a store here on the east side of Oahu in Kailua. Um, we haven't gotten the keys so yeah, but actually happening really soon. We just got a new food truck up and running. Okay, so we're just that's specifically for events in catering. Yeah. sounds super fun for us. Yeah, I want around and have a good time. Please still get on the track from time
• 25:54
  Unknown Speaker: to time.
• 25:54
  Matt Hong: Yeah, especially Good. Good. Like this one that's starting up the near event one, we're still working out the kinks. So yeah, we kind of spearhead that kind of stuff. And then we'll have a manager takeover. Okay. But other, you know, projects that are worth mentioning is Hawaii. You know, we have a pretty big passion project going on with this guy who young guy, his name's Gabe. And she's just banana guru. Okay. It's just spiritually in tune with all things but not her from the academic level. Wow. So that spiritual level, I guess you could say, gave just the loves you need to have a Gabe. from Colorado. Yeah. And he pretty much came to University of Hawaii to study bananas, like tropical ag but like bananas. Okay. Um, so when I heard about this guy, at an event, I was out I was like, Oh, we got it. Yeah, got it. Got it. And pretty much where that's gone though, is we've helped Fun gave a little bit, okay to build this nursery, which is just like a tent to protect, you know, prevent insects and things like that from coming in. And the money that we kind of gave gave, he's going to be paying us back in a special variety of bananas. And these are going to be really righteously grown. Yeah, I'm using like co cropping. So using other crops to fertilize the soil, other crops, push away passes, you know, pests and things like that. And they're the real beauty behind it, too, is not only that we're starting this new supply here in Hawaii, and inspiring some local agriculture not just pulling from what exists, right. The really cool thing is that this nursery that gave his building is going to serve as this point where farmers can purchase banana plants and the sense of food security for why because right now, if you're a farmer, and you wanted to plant 500 calories, you know, so you can successively grow them and your whole crop week by week, there's not really a place to do that. And there's certainly not a place to do that, where you're getting clean plants. There's one place but they're way too busy. And from my understanding, you won't get your order. So that's what Gabe is planning on doing. And so you can get different varieties. And he's very educational. So he'll teach you, you know, certainly talk it out on how to harvest how to know when to harvest and how to grow them. That's the really amazing thing for us that we feel so fortunate that I gave you this. Yeah, Miss banana connection happened, because we couldn't do something like that on our own. But we're really happy to be involved and help be able to spread the story of that too. That's awesome. Cool. Well, maybe if someone's traveling to the islands, maybe for the first time or maybe he's been coming back year after year. What What is something in your opinion, something they should know, coming to Hawaii to help better prepare their experience? Probably go to the neighbor islands, because they're just so beautiful. Yeah, was too There's so much to see, but I think maybe it's because I grew up here, but I think that, you know, hitting quiet. Yeah, that is just it's just so beautiful. Yeah. And something to consider. I guess I'll throw out a couple of few recommendations. Yeah, I have here even in a while, who? Pretty much food based. Yeah. We're awesome. I think. But one of my favorite places is on the east side. It's okay. I love nalo. Okay, and they do this really just fresh point food. It's like a plant based menu, but kind of a Hawaiian, you know, I guess a plant based take on wind food. Yeah. And just a lot of fresh ingredients. They have this super cool outdoor seating area that's like grass on the outside and their little garden. And if that's probably my favorite place to eat during the day, as I love Nala and then shortly down from there, there's also this fruit farm exotic fruit farm called Frankie's nursery. So if you come in Hawaii summer, there's like, I mean, there's stuff year round, but there's a Tons of crazy stuff that you don't only see you know, in maybe Southeast Asia, Central America, and they kind of have it all. So that's a couple just quick additions and those are all out on the east side of Waimanalo in search certainly look up maka poo. That's one of my favorite beaches. Yeah. A little tangent from that. Yeah, who we we often hold these little sunrise beach cleanup parties. Oh, cool. Yeah. They started off as just being parties.
• 31:54
  Unknown Speaker: Yeah, like yeah, certain chemicals.
• 31:57
  Matt Hong: Oh, just across the nation across an age just Hawaii boy. Yeah. Okay, got it.
• 32:20
  Unknown Speaker: huh?
• 32:22
  Unknown Speaker: Yeah, I mean, just be a good human. Yeah. Yeah, that's huge. You know, leave leave your your spot the better than how you found it, you know, so you can share that with thinking about your grandchildren or thinking about, you know, next generations. Like, we went to that spot and now it looks totally wrecked. Like, yeah, you know, have that in mind. Yeah, absolutely. Yeah. I think sometimes even like us locals like you know, there's locals around it. You sometimes don't treat sure the island is good as it should be treated, but especially as young as visiting tourists. Just the ideas of leaving a trace and Just be you and be kind. Yeah, hopefully that's good. Well, Matt, thank you so much for your time. How can people find out more about you and banana and what's next? So you can stay in touch with us either through our Instagram, which is just at anon, so like banana metropolis. Or banane bowls calm is our website that we update once in a while. But other than that, just Yeah, it looks really mainly on Instagrams where we can Okay, thanks. Sounds good. Thanks so much, man. Yeah, thank you. Appreciate you. I just want to thank Matt again and for his time, and that was our very first on location podcast. We also did an Instagram Live during that. And that's something that we look forward to maybe trying out more in the future. Stay tuned for that. My key takeaway from my conversation with Matt was just the hard work towards a vision. Sometimes a vision may seem impossible or bigger. And that's what makes Vision, exciting to go ahead and chase and hearing the story from that and about the rest of the founders is really encouraging to hear that hard work, passion and just stickability can make something a reality. And what they're doing on a wahoo engine in Japan is something that is pretty amazing that they've been able to accomplish in such a short amount of time. So if you're on a wahoo, be sure to check out one of their locations. And you can also follow them on Instagram hit their website. I'll link all that stuff in the show notes as well. Thanks again for joining us today. Hit subscribe leave a review Find us on Instagram at Hawaii's Best. We look forward to connecting more with you and learning more and how we can highlight the best from Hawaii be well. We'll see you next time. Aloha.
• 34:53
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• 34:54
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• 35:02
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