Brewbound 2023 Person of the Year: Garrett Marrero of Maui Brewing

Speaker 1 [00:04] I am here with someone who is quite familiar, uh, to any of our Brewbound readers or listeners, someone who's been on stage at our events, uh, and who we've covered, uh, all his work on quite a bit these past few years. Uh, but our Brewbound Person of the Year this year is Garrett Marrero, who is the co-founder and CEO of Kraft Ohhana. You may also know him, um, from all the stuff we covered last year with Maui Brewing in Modern Times. Congratulations and welcome, Garrett.

Speaker 2 [00:38] Thank you, uh, and aloha. Thanks for having me. It's uh quite an honor, um, you know, I, I think earlier we were saying how it's not, not the reason you do things, but it's nice to get that pat on the back. So, uh, you know, thank you to everyone who, um, you know, voted to select me. Thank you.

Speaker 1 [00:55] Yeah, I was mentioning earlier before we started that I think this was one of the, the quickest and easiest decisions we made for the awards this year, um, and most of that has to do with the work that you did, uh, following the fires, the wildfires in Maui, and it, I think almost as soon as we were seeing the reports about the fires, we were seeing reports or updates from you on Instagram or in emails and updates about what you were doing. Why was it so important for you to kind of stop everything and focus on helping the community right away?

Speaker 2 [01:29] Yeah, well, and this is the community that birthed Maui Brewing and, you know, that has supported, you know, my dream for the last almost 19 years. Um, you know, and ultimately it's the, you know, the The idea that you just have to help if you can. I think that's our duty as humans to, you know, where, where we can help, we must help, and, um, you know, beer has that, I think, you know, just threaded through its entire fabric and, you know, for us being successful here, we were able to help a lot and, you know, certainly it's important to point out that everything that, you know, that I did was the work of many and You know, I had many of my teammates that were brewing beer, packaging, you know, even, you know, I ran into one of our guys in the warehouse when I was speeding through, grabbing a generator, that kind of stuff. I said, hey, I really wish we could be doing more to help the community like, but I, you know, between work and this, and I said, no, like you doing your job at the brewery gives me the peace that I can go do these things. So you're working through my hands and I think that's really important. I'd want my team to hear that in an interview like this because it is how I approached everything and, you know, the community pulled together instantly, uh, dare I say, even before government realized what a problem there was, um, you know, and it was just great to see the community come together to support each other in its time of need, but I guess to put it simply, I'm, I'm just a guy that when I see a need that I can fill and when I see people suffering and our community especially, you know, I'm going to be right there to fight for it and to support it.

Speaker 1 [03:14] Mhm. And when you're talking about your community, I mean, this is, it was impacting your, the backyard of your brewery as well. Like this was very closely connected to like the people that you're working with on a daily basis, right?

Speaker 2 [03:27] Absolutely, yeah, I mean, we, we were up, you know, that morning till around 1:30, you know, dealing with a fire behind the brewery that was made it within about two miles of the brewery, and we finally felt comfortable leaving to go home, get some rest. By that point, Lahaina was well gone already and it was get some rest, get up, and then get back right to work. But yeah, I mean, even while I was driving to the west side that first morning after the fires, I was still coordinating. With our team to get fire hoses in place behind the brewery. So now we own full, you know, setups for fire hoses, fire hydrant wrenches, nozzles, spare nozzles, even. And then have the fire department come out and train us how to use them because, you know, this won't be the last fire and for us to be able to, even if it's throw a hose in the back of my truck and drive over somewhere or fight the fire from behind the the brewery, you know, we'll we'll be there to do that. That's the kind of people we are.

Speaker 1 [04:27] You guys also set up donation centers to help. Uh, what were some of the things that you were like making sure people got? What did people need? What were those helping out with?

Speaker 2 [04:38] Yeah, I think it was anything and everything. Morning one was, you know, what do we have in the cupboards, and it was just, you know, whether it be canned soup, ramen, anything that didn't need like energy necessarily outside of maybe a camp stove to prepare, a lot of protein shakes. We of course can't forget our ohana that our furry little ohana, our pets, if you will. Mine's who's slumbering away over here. You know, we wanted to make sure that we had pet food and pet medications as well. So we really, we just said we put up the call for any donations and the rally point was the brewery, and every morning we'd, you know, divvy stuff up. We'd load trucks. I'd coordinate with the Maui Police Department, good friends of mine there, the captain, I probably should leave them out, but the captains who coordinated our permission to go to the west side because it was heavily restricted. And we would run as a caravan. I mean, we literally had like 10 trucks in a row one day, just, I'm like, stay on my bumper, don't let anybody in between us, you know, that kind of thing. And uh we'd run our missions and then we'd get back. Um, I flew some missions too, as well as a pilot. Uh, I was able to get access from the FAA to land at the West Maui Airport, which is typically restricted to commercial part 135 only. But one of my friends from high school, her husband works at the FAA in Texas and was able to get us to be able to land. So we flew in the 1st 4 days between myself and my instructor. We flew individually missions, and I think it was 87 missions, and we moved over 100,000 pounds of goods as a you know the entire general aviation private community. Um, there was a GoFundMe set up to pay for pilots' fuel too, so we were able to reimburse every pilot in the state that flew missions, was able to get their fuel paid for as well.

Speaker 1 [06:28] The fuel situation was kind of crazy too. I remember seeing some of the videos that you posted of people like lining up just to get gas. Like there's, it's impacting every single aspect of people's day to day.

Speaker 2 [06:41] Yeah, no power, no fuel, right? And there was no power on the west side for quite a while, so we were able to help get fuel up and running at one of my buddies owns minute stop, and he called me and he's like, Hey, I heard my gas station blew up. And I was like, No, man, I'm literally driving by right now. It's fine. And I pulled over, ran around the building, took a video for him. And then we got him a generator set up so he could pump fuel and he was giving away like $25 of fuel per car that would come through. And then once fuel supply started again, then he kind of shifted back towards operating it as a fuel center. But yeah, it is the things you don't think about like that you just don't realize and you know, it's not just even refrigeration for food, it's, you know, refrigeration for medication and you know, we got a generator hauled over to our on a poly site which I picked up and drove over. Um, we ran a bunch of stuff from the base yard that we have like our coils of electrical wire and that kind of stuff out so we could have temp power. Took all the freezer food out of Kahana, which was shut down at the time, moved all that, what we could into Kaanapali, which was very little, and then we just literally drove around communities handing them out like literally, you know, 2030 pound bricks of ground beef, uh, you know, 20 pound boxes of steaks, 20 pound boxes of chicken. And handing it out to the community because people were literally out barbecuing in the streets and we were like, well, here's your food. Do you need buns? Do you need, you know, it was crazy. It was, um, you know, basically we just passed out about $50,000 worth of food from our freezer and fridge in the first two days after the fires.

Speaker 1 [08:16] You also set up this beer collaboration project, the Cocoa project. What does that look like right now? How many breweries are participating? What is, what is the impact of that?

Speaker 2 [08:28] Yeah, so Kokua is great, you know, that's we had done Kokua back in 2018 for the to help Hawaii flood victims and, you know, very limited production, but, you know, we do what we can. We knew we wanted to revive it for this disaster to try and, you know, bring as much relief to Maui as possible, and we were, my team was already talking about it and I would like to interject when I could, but I was, like I said, driving and flying missions. Um, so, you know, Trent, Marsha, KVT specifically, we're working on that, um, with our brew team and uh while, while I was running a mission in West Maui, I got a call from Terrence Sullivan at Sierra Nevada. And he says, hey, I know you're really busy. I'm surprised you even answered, but just know that the entire Sierra team is behind you. We learned a lot with our resilience project and however we can help, count us in. And uh so they were really helpful in guiding us to make it even bigger from what it was in the past. One brewery, us doing it. There now are over 720 breweries around the entire world that have brewed or are brewing Kokua in any form they like, you know, for us it was, here's a potential session IPA recipe what we're going to do, but you do you, do what you do well, no restrictions on recipe, just, hey, donate some or all of the proceeds to, you know, these 3 different local charities here on Maui that we can. Promise the money will go to the community as opposed to OPE for large charitable organizations. So, um, yeah, I'm pretty impressed with that. I know what I've seen so far is somewhere around $250,000 raised. Um, I expect by the time everybody's donations and the proceeds are in. That will probably top a million dollars and that's going to go to support rebuilding houses, helping the or underinsured in terms of their deductibles for rebuilding, and really overall just trying to focus on that medium to long term impact so we can rebuild our community, which it's going to be a long road, so. Yeah, keeping the light on Lahaina right now is really important.

Speaker 1 [10:35] What is the status of the community right now? Like what is it looking like now?

Speaker 2 [10:40] Well, I'd like to say that the chaos has settled for now. Uh, the, uh, you know, are we going to survive, you know, is there food? Is all of those things, those, you know, I think everybody had a knee-jerk reaction to, oh my God, this is COVID all over again, and the ports are going to be closed and all this, and it really wasn't. I mean, I think, you know, Maui, Maui is small. West Maui is even smaller, right? And so the rest of the island was largely unimpacted other than the Kula fires, of course, which were substantial damage that our charity will, of course, help Kula as well. Um. But, you know, the long term road ahead is kind of starting to materialize and I think that's starting to, uh, rightfully so, bring a high level of fear and uncertainty, uh, back into the community. And what I mean by that is the, the realization that, you know, you may not be able to stay on Maui during this rebuilding process because of the lack of housing. Uh, I think we have largely, universally, the island feels forgotten by government. Um, you know, I think even as early as the president's visit here, that was already a feeling and it's only continued to grow. In our community because we see what we're doing for the rest of the world, but not what we're doing for our own country and being that we're an island, it's very different than a situation on the mainland. Not that there aren't horrible disasters on the mainland, but you know, most people could say, hey, you know what, so I got to commute 2 hours to find a house right now that's, you know, livable in the near term. You can't do that here in Hawaii. You can't drive anywhere. In a straight line for 2 hours unless you, unless your car turns into a boat, you know, there's nowhere to go and, uh, you know, I think that's something that really has been at the forefront of the realizations today and that's, it's kind of sad because we know Lahaina is never going to look the same. I, I like to think that it's positive that we can rise even better, um, you know, but I think we do need to focus on community first at this point on how we rebuild.

Speaker 1 [12:45] How about Maui brewing itself? What, like how have you guys been able to tackle and continue on through this? Well, I mean, you're focusing on just helping the community at large, still have a business, so how is that working?

Speaker 2 [13:00] Yeah, you know, again, I think one thing that I've done very well is build a great team and, uh, you know, kudos to them because, you know, there was definitely a period of time where I was not running the business. I was focused on our community and the needs that were needed to be addressed every day, you know, I was putting my steel toes on every morning and going to battle and, you know, the team took care of the business and Uh, that gave me a lot of peace too, seeing that that's possible. Um, you know, I've always had a lot of trust in them, but even more so now, um, you know, last year was tough enough, you know, anytime you acquire a company that is needing of a turnaround like modern times desperately needed, as we all know, you know, that, that, that's all been well publicized, um, that was hard enough. And then now you have Lahaina where our brewery was born and we have the deepest concentration of tap handles and sales in the entire state, uh, and all of those accounts are gone, like not coming back in a year, right? That represented about 15% of our Hawaii state volume, just that one zip code. Um, and then you look at the corresponding decline in tourism because of all this. BS, you know, celebrities who weren't even here saying don't come to Hawaii, you know, we're taking resources away from people, wholly inaccurate and anybody that says don't come to Hawaii right now is just vastly misinformed and doesn't understand the negative impact that that has on the economy. Um, so that was challenging enough, but fortunately our team, as I mentioned earlier, we refocused and we were, you know, growing anywhere from 35 to 48% a month on the mainland with Maui brewing and modern times is starting to really chug along and then, you know, we're past all the equipment issues we had from all the neglect, the years of neglect and equipment there prior. So, things are looking good. I think we are going to finish the year in the green, which is good, uh, but, uh, it was, it's been much more of a challenge than I really signed up for, I think, uh, but it was uh Definitely a year that I was tested and I, I know 2024 is going to be a bang up year as, as we've set up for, uh, we're set up for good success.

Speaker 1 [15:13] I hope there is some form of relaxation in your plans in this coming year to tackle all of that. Uh, my final question for you, because this, I, you'd have so much going on. Uh, but is there anything that you think is really important for people, specifically the people that are in the beer industry watching right now, that they should know if they wanna continue to help or any misconceptions that you wanna break right now about like the status of Hawaii and uh what people need to know right now?

Speaker 2 [15:44] Yeah, I would say, you know, Kuua is still open, you know, as much as it might not be as formal as a, you know, period of time. If you want to brew a beer and donate some of the money to Maui, if you want to hold a pint night and, you know, feel free to reach out to me. I can coordinate with our sales team. We can do some. Collaborative Pint nights, if we, you know, or even your individual breweries, uh, if you want to donate to um any charity here. Uh, we have 3 in particular that we're focused on here in Maui, uh, and that's the NBC Fire Fund, uh, through the Global Empowerment Mission. Um, that's our primary. That's where we're trying to raise the most money. After that is Legacy of Aloha, which is essentially helps the Maui Brewing and the TS restaurant teams, 200 of which individuals lost housing because of the fire. So you can imagine, and we've already distributed through that charity about $1.7 million directly to those 200 impacted families. And then the third one would be the Mackay Foundation. Uh, so, and they're all listed on the Kuua website which is at Mauibrewing Co.com. Um, but yeah, that would be the best way, honestly, and I think just keeping us in light, you know, that, you know, the news is all now, you know, Palestine, Gaza, you know, Israel, rightfully so. We understand the atrocities that occurred there. But then before that it was Ukraine, but we can't forget that our own country is hurting. You know, more than just in Maui, but I think that's something we need to take to the polls and something that we can hopefully, um, you know, shine a light back on our country to have our leaders help America first because we're not doing great and uh I think that's, uh, that's a message I'd like to get out as well.

Speaker 1 [17:32] I think anyone in leadership can probably take some notes from you. So it's, we really appreciate you being so vocal about everything that you've been doing and continuing those efforts, um, and we can't wait to see what else you guys do and what a further impact that you have. Um, so congrats again and I think collective thank you from, I think everyone in your communities and anyone else you've impacted. It's greatly, greatly appreciated.

Speaker 2 [17:59] Well, thank you so much. I, uh, like I said, I do what I do because I believe it's the right thing to do and not, not for the kudos, but, uh, you know, being named, uh, you know. Person of the Year, uh, by Brewbound is, you know, uh, you know, frankly, just kind of like still don't even know how to process that, but, uh, I'll just say I'm stoked to accept that and, and to be, uh, held, even considered. So, um, I'll keep doing what I do, uh, for those reasons, but, uh, I really appreciate the, uh, the old pat on the back and uh look forward to having a beer and a cookie with you soon.