HB 007: Making Banana Ice Cream with Banan on Oahu – Following Your Dreams with Matt Hong of Banan

Matt Hong 0:00

What are you doing? You know, thinking that Hey guys, I'm not gonna do let's go any more but I'm actually gonna try turn bananas into ice cream for a living yeah with three of my other friends and they're like, are you crazy as one of the co founders have been on mat and the rest of the founders took this vision of turning bananas into ice cream a reality. And on today's episode, we're going to learn about the hard work behind what has made banane what it is today and how they are expanding across the globe and on a wahoo so stay tuned. This is an episode if you have a dream, or a vision that you're not quite sure is going to work out. You're gonna want to listen to this episode and here's some of the encouragement and hard work that went into making the non

Unknown Speaker 0:48

a reality. Let's cue the intro.

Unknown Speaker 0:52

Aloha. Welcome to Hawaii's Best podcasts. Learn the stories behind Hawaii's Best experiences influence years and businesses discover everything that makes Hawaii the Aloha state. And now your host, Brian Murphy, I can't wait for you to hear more about the story behind banane. And like I mentioned in the intro, if you have a dream, if you have a vision or something that is making your heartbeat fast, I want you to listen to this because Matt had a different track a different path that he was going for, and he made this pivot. And I don't want to give it all away, I want him to be able to tell the story of how banane started, but go ahead before we jump in, hit that subscribe button and drop a review in iTunes. It really helps the show and for other people to be able to find the show who are interested in travel and stories behind the businesses in Hawaii and also explore the culture of Hawaii. So thanks for considering to do that. And right now we're going to jump on in and talk story with Matt from the

Matt Hong 2:03

Thanks for joining us today on Hawaii's Best How you doing, man? Thanks for having me. I'm doing fantastic. I just spent pretty much the past few days on the neighbor island of Molokai and did some surfing and some diving a whole bunch of fun stuff. Oh man looking into that a little bit. Yeah, absolutely. And then we're also I'm just trying to get a bunch of work done before I head off on Friday with a couple of my partners to go to Japan. Open up a second store over there. Oh, like, like a storefront. Yeah. storefront. Oh, wow. Okay, now we got a lot to talk about. Yeah. Well, tell me a little bit about yourself. Yeah, so a little bit about me. I'm one of the founders of banane. So I grew up here on a wall who grew up surfing majority of my life. My father taught me how to surf once High School in a while, who ended up going to college and UC Santa Cruz. Okay, still did some more surfing over there. Yeah, of course and had such a beautiful time in California. Towards the end of my career over there, in my university studies, we started thinking about entrepreneurial ideas that then brought me back home overall. Yeah. Yeah. Was that kind of in your blood growing up that entrepreneurial mindset or No, not at all. I mean, there's snippets of it of you know, I used to have fun making logos as a kid and things like that. Yeah. But never when I was younger, did I really think I was gonna run my own business? I guess I didn't think too much about the future. Okay. For a while, you know, I wanted to be a doctor when I was studying at university.

Bryan Murphy 3:35

Is that what you went to school for?

Matt Hong 3:37

Yeah. So I studied biology, like molecular biology, right? And towards the end and worked in a lab for two years doing like stem cell research. And then, at the very end of that, I had this entrepreneurial Spark, and so did a lot of my friends who are I grew up with over here. And that's when we started talking about a bunch of different ideas, none that had to do with banana ice cream. Yeah, thing like that. Yeah. Uh, but nonetheless, ideas to talk about and it got us fired up.

So what led you to banana ice cream then?

So first, my friends and I had this wild idea of creating like a Kickstarter platform for music events and concerts. And yeah, we love going to, you know, music festivals and concerts and things like that. And it was like a super wild idea, but it got us dreaming together like, Oh my God, this would be so cool. Yeah, of course, we hit tons of walls with that, and the idea change. And so we're chasing these kind of tech dreams even though none of us could really accomplish it or get it done. And but in the meantime of chasing those ideas, we are exposed to this really silly machine called the bananas. That turns frozen fruit, bananas and dice do Nana's you know, and so we're like, oh, this is amazing. Yeah. And the joke kind of began that. Oh, well, what if we You know, became the Jamba Juice of banana ice cream, okay. And it sat dormant for a bit like we kind of mess with some homemade batches for fun of it, because we love the product. You know, we really did love the simplicity of it right away. Yeah, that's what kind of amazed us and gave us the wow factor like, Whoa, this is literally just fruit. Yeah. And it has ice cream like consistency and texture. I'm so shocked just in the beginning. And only later when we, you know, we're hitting walls with these other ideas. And it kind of clicked that. We're from Hawaii. Yeah. And it's one of the few states that commercially grows bananas that we could add this farm to table philosophy to it. And with that kind of depth of being able to support our local farmers learn more about local agriculture and you know, the players in Hawaii's food scene, sit at add this depth that, you know, inspired us to be like, okay, we'll take this silly banana ice cream idea. Sure. Yeah, cuz also imagine you know me coming out of college and yeah, preparing for med school. My parents are both in medicine. I'm sure they're like,

well, that must have been fun conversation. Yeah,

what are you doing? You know, thinking that Hey guys, I'm not gonna do let's go anymore but I'm actually gonna try turn bananas into ice cream for a living yeah with three of my other friends and they're like, Are you crazy? So there's they're supportive the whole way? Yeah, are you crazy, but I'm sure they have their thoughts and their you know about like, oh, man, I hope he's gonna re be alright with that. But I think they also recognize that we're young enough at the time we were 22. But if this thing totally failed in a year, whatever it be, that could kind of pick ourselves back up. Now, you mentioned something about buying locally. And I know that's a huge part of the non and maybe talk a little bit about that. Like why a lot of people I talked to that's huge on their heart is supporting local farmers buy locally. But what's the Why behind that? Yeah, the y's huge, especially here in Hawaii. There's kind of like the common statistic that 80 to maybe 90% of our food is shipped in. Yeah, I think for fresh produce, it's a bit better like fruits. I think we actually, Last I heard we might be even growing 60%. But I have to check on that. Yeah. Anyway, though. A big push to buy local and support our farms here is Hawaii is literally one of the most isolated land masses in the world. We're out here in the Pacific on our own. And so any food that comes in comes in with this taxing carbon emissions. And so that's probably the first thing that comes to mind is shortening that voyage so we can, you know, reduce our carbon footprint. But also the other benefits of it helps support our local economy by you know, putting money into the hands of our fellow farmers and neighbors, right. prouder than some big corporations that aren't investing in Hawaii and then Lastly, I always how we kind of train our employees that we also just want to inspire a sense of culture is focused on agriculture and bringing attention to that, you know, how food gets our table and the profoundness of that whole chain of events that has to happen, right. Yeah, that's great. If we could get a question on live, a lot of people want to know, like, where do you go to have fun? Fun, boy. Yeah, I think that was one question earlier. Uh, well, yeah, the answer that, I mean, people, I think, in Hawaii if you're not super into the oceans, or it's just probably not the place to be because there's a nightlife and there's any fun like that. But the majority of fun that I think about is the different surf around the island. Yeah, sometimes I'll go hiking. Some other people are really big into hiking and you know, there's tons of fun hikes. Also just traveling to the neighbor islands. I mean, just the amount of beaches and waterfalls and waves to serve. Yeah, it's just huge. Yeah, maybe take us around the islands a little bit where they kind of unique characteristics of each one. So yeah, I guess in my kind of eyes, a wall who's the busy one, right? You know, it's got traffic. That's things like that. Yeah, it's like a small skyline. But it also has tons of surfers, considering there's so many people here. There's plenty of waves and lots of surf and lots of things to do. Maui, you know, I haven't been over there for a bit. Yeah. Beautiful, like a little bit bigger. Yeah. And kind of spread out. One of my favorites is probably quiet. Yeah, it's just so gorgeous. The Nepali coast and the kind of colossal ness on that side of the island and white sand beaches. Yeah. I'm also a huge fan of Molokai, I go over there quite a bit to one of our founders and friends ranch over there. Okay. And that's also a really gorgeous Island. They tell you if you go to Molokai, they tell you to visit. But don't stay. Yeah, they're adamant about that. Okay. And Big Island Yeah, I've yet to do yes it's a little kid and I've been meaning to because we have a couple farmers that we support over there and Okay, I'm really curious to check it out because that's even bigger and so understanding big islands is always really show Yeah, yeah, really show really spread out. And then yeah, there's lots of agriculture. I think there's some pretty cool communities that are like into permaculture Yeah. And then there's also other interesting communities that you know I hear about like billionaire came here. But they have they're kind of picked off huge pieces the other spots. Yeah. It's a mix of it's a mix of that. I mean, there's a whole spectrum of Yeah, like, wealth to people living out I think in the jungle. Okay. Well, back to banana a little bit. Love to hear a little bit more about the business model, maybe specifically talking about your locations, and just kind of how that's evolved. He talked a little bit about when we started, you're heading over to Japan at the end of this week, yeah, yeah. Yeah, the Navy just kind of how it all started and obviously bring us to what's happening this week.

Yeah, absolutely. Well, how it all started, my friends and I we work off of spontaneity. Yeah. We never knew what we were doing barely, right now. And in the very beginning, we didn't know if we were going to do a food truck. If we're okay, you know, a brick and mortar. Or if we're going to set up in farmer's market, like, right 10 pop up 10 our first, you know, vessel of selling our banana ice cream ended up being a food truck. And how that came to be was we saw a Craigslist ad, some partners of mine, and we decided to check it out. We did not think we were buying a food truck that day. Oh, yeah, we're checking it out. I think we're gonna maybe do the store thing or the farmers market thing. And we brought along our buddy gallons. His family friend who flips cars for a living on Craigslist. Okay, and this guy is smooth. Boss Schneider. And if you ever have the opportunity to like watch someone do negotiate you know the art of negotiation like that. Yeah, it's just I encourage it because it was just amazing he got the guy like on his back Neil's like, right when we started and you know, asking all these questions, you know, pumping you know, the engine hot and all Yeah. And pretty much he negotiated our food truck down from what was listed at 5000. down to $2,000. That's pretty good. Yeah. And which was even though for us though, that was still like it's huge. Oh, yeah. purchase. We're like, well spent $2,000. Yeah. Now now. Yeah, that's it's it's a smaller thing. But when you were just waking up that day, like not thinking you're going to try that's for sure. Exactly. Parents, my one of my partners, his parents did not think we were coming back with a food truck in front of their house. Yeah. Which we then painted up and do all the fun stuff later. But it's funny because when we're negotiating the car, it turned to this point where he just turned to us. Like, well, you guys gonna take it or not you guys gonna take it out? Yeah. If not, I'm gonna like buy it and flip. like, Okay, thank you. And he helped drive us up, drive it off the home the guy's house that day. And we brought it to that experience place where we then kind of built it out and started our journey. Yeah. And from there the food truck started to do fairly well it started I mean, Head Start over a diamond is still parked there today. Okay, and we're actually having a little event there this Friday. Awesome, like live music and getting some free beer and stuff. So we started over there Diamond Head. And things started to pick up I think because we were young local guys. There's like an initial buzz from bloggers like Oh, these kids trying to do you know, good. Yeah. Which really helps. And then Instagram is what really? Oh, yeah. Started to just naturally market itself, right. The product is like, you know, it's kind of aesthetically pleasing like, looks like something you might want to take a picture. Yes. None of us were into a Instagram before we started this, I certainly wasn't now I run our accounts. You're on it. So I definitely take pictures of swirls for a living. Yeah, that's what I do. But that did as well. Instagram. Yeah. And shortly after that, maybe not too short but like a year into business, we decided to launch a Kickstarter. So back with the the food truck What year was that? That was we opened December 27. of 2014. So pretty much 2015 Okay, this one we Oh, yeah, so we just hit four years. Wow. It's pretty good.

Yeah. The sooner we guys are now I mean, that's awesome.

Yeah. And we've been that's great. I mean, when we first started super naive, we I don't know why, but we're just like, Oh, yeah, like four or five years from now. We're gonna have like 200 stores. Not really PC, you know? Yeah, the things that have to happen. Yeah, in order for that to come to be. But we've been really, really happy and feel very fortunate and feel very thankful that our communities supported us as far. Yeah. So to continue on that, about a year into the food truck, we launched a Kickstarter and raised a bit of money from there to start, build the store that we're in today that we're sitting in today that across the University of Hawaii. Yeah. And this is our biggest footprint. We kind of saw it as this awesome chance to create a flagship store. Yeah. For us where we are right now in Manila, the valley that our stores in we we picked it with this reason to like it seems so perfect that it's in this center point within the breadbasket of like education in Hawaii, or at least in a wahoo Yeah, yeah. The University of Hawaii right across from us. You have you h lab, like a middle school right directly across from us. Mid pack. Donahoe. Yeah, Roosevelt, there's, you know, there's a handful of schools was that strategic and that was kind of the idea. Yeah, it was strategic in the sense that, you know, I think We thought social media would do well, but it's also this feel good that hey, we want to be involved in Hawaii's education. And since then, I don't know if it's because of its location or just the brand. You know, we've gotten to speak at pretty much all these schools at the university. Yeah, that was kind of an inspiration that there's gonna be a lot of this youth and that we want to be changing how people look at food and how to do that best is to you know, be raising our kids, our children on on food that's good for them and also good for the local economy and good for the earth. Yeah, kind of switching gears just maybe a little bit. I'd love to hear about the other owners who they are and their story just a little bit. Totally. Yeah, there's Zack, Luke and Galen, um, that to the four of us together started our food truck. Yeah. GALEN left about a year in because he had some really amazing opportunities Okay, going down in South America where he's actually going to mentor under the founder of North Face. Okay. Founder, North Bay. unfortunately passed away right when he was going down and to speed things up. GALEN now works for Patagonia provisions, which is Patagonia's food arm. They're doing some amazing things with their supply chain in very Patagonia fashion. And so he splits time between kind of California and Molokai II. Okay, and over here now, but the other two operating partners Zack, me and him we go way, way back. Okay. We were like the best of friends like throughout our whole childhood but you know, we go back as far to like, little kids like, yeah, it's been seven years old soccer. Yes. Luke is well, he he's we all we all went to school Exactly. making myself all started going to find a host school. I'm in seventh grade. So we've known each other since middle school. And Zach and Luke. Were always like, super good. Yeah. Best Buddies always get into trouble. They're still always the rascals. Yeah. The ones that are probably driving the spawn today. I'm like, hey, let's think about it. Right. But yeah, they're just so good. Awesome, awesome guys, Luke, he's the husband of one of our other classmates, Chris and more. He's a three time world champion surfer. So he gets to do quite a bit of traveling with her and surfing with there and Luke's kind of just the rugged guy who the kind of breakdown of like us three is a Luke. He's the strong man. He's building all this material that's around us right now. He does a lot of our build outs. Zack kind of leads a lot of our accounting and finance and management. And then I kind of share some of that management with him and then as well as to kind of the, I guess, graphics, creative marketing, areas of our business, okay, but we're all to talk about us all personally. We're all surfers, and that's certainly a passion that we all connect on that we'd love to surf together. We've done some really fun kayak journeys together. So we love doing anything. I outdoor in general and as well as dancing around a lot, we have quite a bit of company parties with the employees and there's quite a bit of dancing the interest. Was there a time and maybe this kind of will kind of lead to Japan and your opportunity there. But was there a time in the last maybe four or five years, whatever. I'm not sure if this is gonna work out. And was there a moment like you had, like, press through? Maybe you could take us to that moment? A little bit about perseverance.

Certainly, we've, we've had some tight times in the past. To be clear to you, especially for anybody who's going on an entrepreneurial journey. We had it like a bit plush, like our parents were very supportive. Yeah, Zach and myself, you know, we're 27 now. We didn't move out of our parents place. So not even a year ago. Yeah. So I'm having a good network of like families support that was pretty huge. Okay, you know, To say that we made a completely on our own. Yeah. That would be just incredibly tough. And I and I have just the most huge, you know, respect for entrepreneurs that start with literally nothing but family, you know, it's maybe they don't even speak the language of the country. Yeah, you know, travel over and make some imagine. I really can't imagine. Yeah. So, family support in the beginning was huge. Okay. Especially, you know, just letting them us living with them. Yeah, definitely tons of meals and things like that. Yeah. And because for the first like, years, or so, you know, pe was not a consistent thing. Sure. And even when the PE started, it was very small. Again, we're slowly waking it up. Yeah. But I, I guess, to answer your question about hardships, our, our dynamic between us is pretty fun and funky. Okay. And I think because we're friends, it's kind of like if you got stuck in Like a hairy situation on a hike or something like that you kind of type of friend group that you kind of like

laugh it off. Yeah.

It's the same goes with kind of some of our hardships, there's harder times. But I think because we're so young and there's not as much responsibility on the line, there's been a lot of times we kind of laugh things off. Yeah, you know, we've had times where our truck in the very beginning just would shut down. So power, like energy needs and things like that, where there's big, you know, mess ups and things, you know, go the unexpected. And we've fortunately been able to embrace it with kind of a sense of laughter and we've never been in a situation that it's been so tight that like, it's Yeah, sure. Yeah. And and, you know, knock on wood, but, um, yeah, so far. I guess. we've embraced a lot of hardship with laughter And oh, yeah, you got it sometimes laugh it off. It's just like, yeah,

Unknown Speaker 22:00

Yes, and yeah, yeah, I

Matt Hong 22:01

mean, there's a lot of went into this business. Yeah, like the first year and pretty much the first year is, is us for we're in the truck every single day we started introducing employees a little before a year out. Um, but yeah, there's just been a lot of hard work there. So how did relationships in Japan come about and those opportunities? Yeah, Hawaii has an interesting relationship with Japan. Or Yes, Japan to Hawaii. They it's this amazing affection? Yeah. between our cultures. And the Japanese love Hawaii. And so they have like a they hold like a Hawaii fair picture and a handful of Hawaii. Okay. And so we're invited to one. Yeah. And the company that was hosting it was kind enough to you know, market is really hard on national news coverage. And yeah, so we just had a huge success at this Hawaii fair, and partners who we worked with for that. So this big company partnership with us. A few individuals, they ended up being the ones to help us take the brand over to Hawaii. And we had some good chemistry in the beginning. And they were still working things out. Yeah, things aren't picture. Perfect. And sure. It's interesting. You know, it's our first go of trying to control the brand. Yeah. And the product from afar, and make sure that people are putting as much love into it as us. Yeah. And so there's things that we're super happy about, like their supply chain is awesome. Yeah, for the most part, like they're bananas, we got to check out where they're coming from in the Philippines, because you can't have local bananas in Japan, okay. But the shift kind of focused more towards using really good agricultural practices, which these guys do. And also labor practices, because as you start sourcing agriculture to take off on a developing nation, yeah, there's some dark stories. And that was really important to us that we, you know, at least did our due diligence to check it out a bit and then there's still more to investigate and check out and improve because we need Talking about your brand is more than just Hey, make sure you get the colors right. Oh, it's more than the recipe right? It's it's, it's the philosophy. Yeah. Like, well, where's the stuff being grown? Right? How's it being grown? Something that we're always trying to improve on even over here in Hawaii? Yeah. Cool. Yeah. So I mean, that kind of answers just a little bit about Hey, what's next then? Does that when are those stores open? is a multiple stores are so we have one storm that's set to open in Osaka, Japan. Yeah. March 14. Okay. And then we're also building out a store here on the east side of Oahu in Kailua. Um, we haven't gotten the keys so yeah, but actually happening really soon. We just got a new food truck up and running. Okay, so we're just that's specifically for events in catering. Yeah. sounds super fun for us. Yeah, I want around and have a good time. Please still get on the track from time

Unknown Speaker 24:58

to time.

Matt Hong 24:58

Yeah, especially Good. Good. Like this one that's starting up the near event one, we're still working out the kinks. So yeah, we kind of spearhead that kind of stuff. And then we'll have a manager takeover. Okay. But other, you know, projects that are worth mentioning is Hawaii. You know, we have a pretty big passion project going on with this guy who young guy, his name's Gabe. And she's just banana guru. Okay. It's just spiritually in tune with all things but not her from the academic level. Wow. So that spiritual level, I guess you could say, gave just the loves you need to have a Gabe. from Colorado. Yeah. And he pretty much came to University of Hawaii to study bananas, like tropical ag but like bananas. Okay. Um, so when I heard about this guy, at an event, I was out I was like, Oh, we got it. Yeah, got it. Got it. And pretty much where that's gone though, is we've helped Fun gave a little bit, okay to build this nursery, which is just like a tent to protect, you know, prevent insects and things like that from coming in. And the money that we kind of gave gave, he's going to be paying us back in a special variety of bananas. And these are going to be really righteously grown. Yeah, I'm using like co cropping. So using other crops to fertilize the soil, other crops, push away passes, you know, pests and things like that. And they're the real beauty behind it, too, is not only that we're starting this new supply here in Hawaii, and inspiring some local agriculture not just pulling from what exists, right. The really cool thing is that this nursery that gave his building is going to serve as this point where farmers can purchase banana plants and the sense of food security for why because right now, if you're a farmer, and you wanted to plant 500 calories, you know, so you can successively grow them and your whole crop week by week, there's not really a place to do that. And there's certainly not a place to do that, where you're getting clean plants. There's one place but they're way too busy. And from my understanding, you won't get your order. So that's what Gabe is planning on doing. And so you can get different varieties. And he's very educational. So he'll teach you, you know, certainly talk it out on how to harvest how to know when to harvest and how to grow them. That's the really amazing thing for us that we feel so fortunate that I gave you this. Yeah, Miss banana connection happened, because we couldn't do something like that on our own. But we're really happy to be involved and help be able to spread the story of that too. That's awesome. Cool. Well, maybe if someone's traveling to the islands, maybe for the first time or maybe he's been coming back year after year. What What is something in your opinion, something they should know, coming to Hawaii to help better prepare their experience? Probably go to the neighbor islands, because they're just so beautiful. Yeah, was too There's so much to see, but I think maybe it's because I grew up here, but I think that, you know, hitting quiet. Yeah, that is just it's just so beautiful. Yeah. And something to consider. I guess I'll throw out a couple of few recommendations. Yeah, I have here even in a while, who? Pretty much food based. Yeah. We're awesome. I think. But one of my favorite places is on the east side. It's okay. I love nalo. Okay, and they do this really just fresh point food. It's like a plant based menu, but kind of a Hawaiian, you know, I guess a plant based take on wind food. Yeah. And just a lot of fresh ingredients. They have this super cool outdoor seating area that's like grass on the outside and their little garden. And if that's probably my favorite place to eat during the day, as I love Nala and then shortly down from there, there's also this fruit farm exotic fruit farm called Frankie's nursery. So if you come in Hawaii summer, there's like, I mean, there's stuff year round, but there's a Tons of crazy stuff that you don't only see you know, in maybe Southeast Asia, Central America, and they kind of have it all. So that's a couple just quick additions and those are all out on the east side of Waimanalo in search certainly look up maka poo. That's one of my favorite beaches. Yeah. A little tangent from that. Yeah, who we we often hold these little sunrise beach cleanup parties. Oh, cool. Yeah. They started off as just being parties.

yesterday that actually.

When we first opened the store, we said you wake up and like I might as well open the store that we're sitting in. A we were partying a lot with our employees and having like a super fun time and then it started feeling like hey, it's getting a little toxic. We're just partying with our employees. Yeah, we we had early morning surf at this beach called mock booth. And we're like, wow, how beautiful would it be if he like brought the whole team here and treated out beers and shots for You know, tea and juice. And so that's how that started. We you know, we just started this sunrise party where we'd go drink tea, make pancakes on the beach and serve and feel refreshed. You know, you hits like eight or nine o'clock and then you're like, oh, wow, I'm ready to start my day. And then later on some really, you know, Brad and boys bars like oh, Virginia Beach thing we should just clean it up while we're at it. Now we try to incorporate that in school. Maybe spring off that a little bit. What are some things some etiquette for people to know coming to the islands? And obviously pick up after yourself is a huge wine So yeah, I guess anywhere you're on the world right? Yeah, Leave No Trace Exactly. Um, you know, a good one to recognize coming you know, to swim in the oceans and there's lots of sun Yeah. Is a sunscreen. That's been a big issue lately that to use reef safe sunscreen and honey 21 Oh, is that right? Yeah. That is going to be banned.

Unknown Speaker 30:58

Yeah, like yeah, certain chemicals.

Matt Hong 31:01

Oh, just across the nation across an age just Hawaii boy. Yeah. Okay, got it.

Yeah, yeah. So January 2021.

Oh, that's all Yeah, I had no idea. So that's one that I'd recommend is you know, looking into good sunscreens. Yeah. You can buy some up anon. Just through the Instagram a wink. Yeah. But let's see what else

Unknown Speaker 31:24

huh?

Unknown Speaker 31:26

Yeah, I mean, just be a good human. Yeah. Yeah, that's huge. You know, leave leave your your spot the better than how you found it, you know, so you can share that with thinking about your grandchildren or thinking about, you know, next generations. Like, we went to that spot and now it looks totally wrecked. Like, yeah, you know, have that in mind. Yeah, absolutely. Yeah. I think sometimes even like us locals like you know, there's locals around it. You sometimes don't treat sure the island is good as it should be treated, but especially as young as visiting tourists. Just the ideas of leaving a trace and Just be you and be kind. Yeah, hopefully that's good. Well, Matt, thank you so much for your time. How can people find out more about you and banana and what's next? So you can stay in touch with us either through our Instagram, which is just at anon, so like banana metropolis. Or banane bowls calm is our website that we update once in a while. But other than that, just Yeah, it looks really mainly on Instagrams where we can Okay, thanks. Sounds good. Thanks so much, man. Yeah, thank you. Appreciate you. I just want to thank Matt again and for his time, and that was our very first on location podcast. We also did an Instagram Live during that. And that's something that we look forward to maybe trying out more in the future. Stay tuned for that. My key takeaway from my conversation with Matt was just the hard work towards a vision. Sometimes a vision may seem impossible or bigger. And that's what makes Vision, exciting to go ahead and chase and hearing the story from that and about the rest of the founders is really encouraging to hear that hard work, passion and just stickability can make something a reality. And what they're doing on a wahoo engine in Japan is something that is pretty amazing that they've been able to accomplish in such a short amount of time. So if you're on a wahoo, be sure to check out one of their locations. And you can also follow them on Instagram hit their website. I'll link all that stuff in the show notes as well. Thanks again for joining us today. Hit subscribe leave a review Find us on Instagram at Hawaii's Best. We look forward to connecting more with you and learning more and how we can highlight the best from Hawaii be well. We'll see you next time. Aloha.

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