Some Hawaii Farms Want To Keep Feeding Locals — Even As Tourism Returns…As the threat of COVID-19 subsides, some local food growers say they will continue to prioritize local families that kept them afloat during the pandemic over the tourism industry.
When the coronavirus pandemic temporarily shuttered slews of Hawaii restaurants and hotels, some local farmers and food distributors instantly lost their client base.
Then a new kamaaina market appeared. Concerned about bare grocery store shelves, the unreliability of food imports and the health risks of shopping for food in crowds, an increasing number of local families started looking for convenient, contact-less ways to access quality Hawaii-grown ingredients to make meals at home.
On the Big Island, hundreds of families found a solution in the food hub Adaptations, which lost most of its major tourism-based wholesale clients during the first year of the pandemic but discovered a burgeoning business model in direct-to-consumer sales.
