Growers on Hawaii’s Big Island use chemical analysis to accuse retailers and coffee makers of passing off commodity beans as Kona.
Kona coffee dates to the 1820s, when missionaries started planting the crop. Plantations began springing up 20 years later but faded out toward the end of the century as labor costs rose.
Immigrants from Portugal and then Japan bought up the land, dividing it into small plots that they ran for generations as family farms.
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Contemporary farmers are a mix of their descendants and newcomers willing to take on the region’s punishing four-wheel-drive tracks, fierce mosquitoes and back-breaking loads of beans.
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Costco, Others Ink False Ad Deals Over Kona Coffee
Law360 (March 9, 2021, 7:05 PM EST) -- Costco, Marshalls and Gold Coffee Roasters have reached agreements with Hawaiian coffee farmers to settle out of a proposed class action that accused them of selling ordinary coffee under the name "Kona," including a $6 million payment from Gold.
Under a proposed settlement filed Monday in Washington federal court, Gold Coffee Roasters Inc. would pay the money to more than 600 class members who grow Kona coffee, depending on how much product each sold during the proposed class period. The company also agreed to new labeling that will adhere to Hawaii's "more stringent labeling laws."