NUMILA — Fred Cowell, the general manager for Kaua‘i Coffee, said the parking lot to the Kaua‘i Coffee Visitor Center would normally be filled with cars, Thursday.
“We’d be having a lot of visitors parked there,” Cowell said. “Both parking lots would be full. But with the pandemic, there are no visitors and now, there is a lot of room.”
Cowell said one of the good things coming out of COVID was the contractor working on the Hanapepe Bridge used Google Earth to seek out locations where they could store the girders being used for the bridge construction project.
“Between Lihu‘e and the bridge project, our parking lot was the only thing they could find,” Cowell said. “I’m glad we could work with them to provide the space they needed. In fact, they just cleared everything out, last night — just in time for the food distribution.”
Kaua‘i Coffee partnered with the Kaua‘i Independent Food Bank, and scores of volunteers from the East Kaua‘i Lions Club, the Zonta Club of Kaua‘i, the Koloa Lions Club, the West Kaua‘i Lions Club, and a handful of business representatives, including the Kaua‘i District Health Office to provide more than 250 packages to Kaua‘i Coffee employees who have been furloughed because of the COVID-19, and other Westside people who need food supplies to tide them over.
“The Westside doesn’t really have a place where the community distributions can take place,” Moniz said. “Kaua‘i Coffee’s parking lot can handle the traffic without spilling into the highway. This makes it easy for people on the Westside to get food.”
Patrons to the food distribution received food packages that included hamburger, spinach wraps, soups, eggs, canned goods, cereal and a bag of Kaua‘i Coffee.
“Right now, we’re concerned about making sure the people get quality food,” Moniz said. “We’re still getting a lot of people coming to get food.”
What ever happened with those coffee slaves that Kauai Coffee was busted for?