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A Spicy Success
Oahu
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Photo: David Croxford |
Here’s how it works: You think you are in one line of business, but unexpectedly discover you are, in fact, selling something else.
If you’re smart enough to know your customers understand their wants better than you do, you switch gears and follow them to success.
That’s precisely what Cheryl To of PacifiKool did.
After 25 years in New York’s restaurant and catering business, Hawaii-born To packed up the brand name and returned to the Islands with dreams of launching her own business — maybe a wine bar or a cutting-edge catering company. To her surprise, To discovered the wine-bar fad had caught on in Hawaii, so she decided instead to launch a catering company.
Besides her red wine and rosemary bundt cake, she enjoyed serving her customers a specialty ginger-ale refresher, built around hand-crafted Hawaiian ginger syrup and ice-cold water or sparkling soda.
“Everyone kind of focused on the ginger ale. They kept telling me, ‘Cheryl, you have to bottle this stuff!’ Now, it’s all about ginger.”
To exclusively uses fragrant, peppery, spicy Hawaii-grown ginger (“It’s much better than the stuff imported from China”) as well as a companion product made from locally grown Thai ginger or galangal. Her stand at the popular Kapiolani Community College Saturday open market draws crowds, including a growing number of Japanese tourists. With an eye on the tourist market, To opened a stand in Waikiki to sell her ginger-infused drinks and other local products. With the decline in tourism and poor winter beach weather, foot traffic has been a little slow, but it should turn around, To believes.
Next step: perhaps Japan. To has talked to a distributor and her open market customers have been spreading the word. “We’re really becoming famous in Japan,” To laughed.
Where to get PacifiKool ginger products:
KCC Saturday market
Fujioka’s Wines
Tamura’s Markets
R. Field at Foodland, Beretania
Aloha Tower open market
KTA Superstores on the Big Island
How to use it:
Make your own ginger ale, pour it over fruit (ideal on pineapple or papaya) or how about a Thai–ginger, basil-lime martini?
For recipes, go to pacifikool.com
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