104-Maui Update with Garrett_01
[00:00:00] Bryan Murphy: Coming up next on Hawaii's
[00:00:01] Garrett Marrero - Maui Brewing: Best. You get to come and serve the community. So as a responsible tourist. I believe in whether it's as simple as making a contribution of 501c3 while you're here or working as a volunteer in a 501c3 or other volunteer organization here that's organized.
[00:00:20] Announcer: Aloha! Welcome to Hawaii's Best.
[00:00:22] Garrett Marrero - Maui Brewing: Here, you'll learn what to know before traveling as we discover Hawaiian culture, local businesses, And the experiences that make Hawaii one of the most incredible places in the world. And now your host, Brian Murphy.
[00:00:37] Bryan Murphy: Well, happy Aloha Friday. Thank you so much for joining us today. Again, I am joined with Garrett Marrow, the CEO and co founder of Maui Brewing Company.
[00:00:45] And we're going to be discussing a week in review about happenings on Maui and how that you can continue to best support the recovery efforts and the people of Maui. So Garrett, how you doing, man? I'm doing all
[00:00:58] Garrett Marrero - Maui Brewing: right, you know, I think, uh, all [00:01:00] things considered the perspective, right? So like the new today, you're
[00:01:04] Bryan Murphy: back on island, so that's probably feels good.
[00:01:07] Garrett Marrero - Maui Brewing: It does. Yeah. I mean, I, um, you know, as you know, I was gone last week when we did this from, uh, Jackson, Wyoming, we were there to support Kami and her charitable. Organization, uh, called the U S 13, which is us13. org, you know, and that was an emotional time of course, you know, honoring the 13 service members we lost in Kabul when we, we pulled out of there.
[00:01:27] And one of our friends, the Jim McCollum and his family, his son, Lance Corporal Riley McCollum was one that passed at 20 years old, having never met his daughter. So, you know, we went from fires and fury of that to this, you know, Emotional, but positive memoriam. And then of course, you know, Kami's family had some fires and it's just been, it's been an emotional time, but yeah, crazy month.
[00:01:54] I'm glad it's September.
[00:01:57] Bryan Murphy: So just talking about the [00:02:00] feel of things and being back on the island, how's the community feeling, how's it from your perspective and those within your, your influence?
[00:02:09] Garrett Marrero - Maui Brewing: Yeah, you know, uh, of course, every day was talking to my team and people on the West side, you know, not a day goes by that where there's not at least, you know, a dozen texts and a couple of calls, but, you know, really just staying on the pulse of, you know, what the needs are.
[00:02:22] And it feels like the call for supplies and needs is slowing. You know, there's not really a. You know, the West side water's in a good situation there now, you know, housing's generally taken care of through the FEMA assistance program, you know, whether it be hotels or Airbnb, you know, there's still a demand for air purifiers because the, you know, if you've read about how, you know, society didn't even know to think about it in a fire, but, you know, you think about all the things that are under your kitchen cabinet or in your garage or, you know, even just insulation in your walls and.
[00:02:58] You know, PVC pipe when it [00:03:00] burns, right? It's plastic, you know? So all of those toxins that are in the soil and then the air, you know, it's kind of ash really now as those blow around those cause issues for people. And I, I, I think I mentioned on one of my earlier interviews, how the first Thursday after the fire, so two days later, I spent more time close to La Jena ground zero and had the gnarliest headache all day and the smoke is getting me and I realized it was actually the toxin, so.
[00:03:27] Yeah, I think it's more the need for air purifiers and filters for homes immediately surrounding the fire areas. I had a great call yesterday with a company called CeroZone. They are a, um, they use ozone technology for filtration. And they're a Berkshire Hathaway company, which is Warren Buffett. And they are working with me to get at least 500 air purifiers sent to, sent to Maui.
[00:03:54] And these are like... you know, whole house type air purifiers. So that's like a 5 million [00:04:00] donation that they'd be making essentially through the retail value of that. But so, yeah, I'm excited to put that together just through our relationships, really.
[00:04:07] Bryan Murphy: It sounds like that's been brought up quite a bit. Like that's the biggest tangible need that someone can help out with.
[00:04:13] Is there a number that like a goal that people are, were aiming
[00:04:17] Garrett Marrero - Maui Brewing: for? So not so much on the air purifiers. I threw out the number 500 just because it. felt right based on just how intimate I've been with the situation on West Maui and our country. So just doing the rough math on how many homes and then thinking about, you know, distribution centers.
[00:04:34] Also thinking about homes that are housing a lot of people right now, even if they're not in the immediately affected areas, you know, anytime you have. You know, if you've ever done a, you know, family trip to a small cabin, you know, that, Oh
[00:04:48] Bryan Murphy: man, I like flashback real quick. That was, yeah, yeah.
[00:04:51] Garrett Marrero - Maui Brewing: Right. I remember when I left, I said I'd never do that again.
[00:04:55] But you know, there's situations that that could benefit as well. You know, you don't want one person getting [00:05:00] sick and then everybody else doesn't. Their tech not only cleans the air for the things that we're talking about, like VOCs, but also. Because it's ozone destroys any virus or, you know, common cold all the way through, you know, anything
[00:05:11] Bryan Murphy: else.
[00:05:12] So then for those who are wanting to continue to support the best way would be probably through like a 501c3, finding an organization that way? Yeah, I think
[00:05:21] Garrett Marrero - Maui Brewing: there's two, two great ways. And I think the number one is, you know, because I'm a big believer in, you know, the This term has become controversial, but pulling yourself up by your bootstraps to see, you know, I think I'm a big believer.
[00:05:34] That's controversial now? Believe it or not, it is. Really? Yeah. Okay. So, I, I believe in, in setting the lay of the land so that you can do those things, right? Giving that opportunity. And so, for me, it's, uh, number one is tourism, right? We need to have our, we need to have a strong economy, whatever that economy is.
[00:05:53] You know, fortunately, unfortunately, whatever side of the fence you're on, tourism is, you know, four out of 5 on [00:06:00] Maui, roughly, you know, three and a half. So encouraging responsible tourism. And you get a couple of things with that. One, you heal the economy here because outside the impacted areas, there's layoffs happening right now across the island.
[00:06:15] I mean, we're off, we're off about 50% in our brew pub in our restaurant in Kihei. Which is a completely unimpacted area and the hotels are ready to receive guests. The, the boats are ready as soon as they hire people back because they've all laid people off. You know, it's all just a, it's a, it's a thriving environment.
[00:06:33] If we had tourism, I would say West Maui is closed, but with the rest of Maui being open, you can come support the economy, which helps us help ourselves. Sure. I said, you get a lot of things with that one healthy economy. Number two, you get to come and serve the community. So as a responsible tourist. I believe in whether that's as simple as making a contribution of 501c3 while you're here or working as a volunteer.
[00:06:59] in [00:07:00] a 501c3 or other volunteer organization here that's organized. Again, West Maui's closed, so don't look to come and go to West Maui. If there's an organized volunteer group going over there for a specific purpose, whether it be with World Central Kitchen, Feed My Sheep, those types of things, totally reasonable.
[00:07:20] But there are plenty of charitable organizations that can use help now that are Central Maui and South Maui. Yeah, those are the main things about tourism. Um, and responsible tourism and the thing that everybody always asks me is like, well, hey, you know, I've been seeing this a lot on your Instagram or in the media.
[00:07:38] What is responsible tourism? Like what, what would you expect? You know? And I say, I always tell them first right out the gate. It was like, I can tell you're a responsible tourist because you're actually asking what is responsible tourism. So that's number one. Step one. Step one. Yeah. That's number one. So number two is just.
[00:07:55] Come with a sense to serve the community. So, you know, there's the [00:08:00] ecotourism, volunteerism kind of around the world. And I think that's something that we can really improve upon here in, and I think as we remodel tourism moving forward, you know, having that be part of everybody's visit to Maui. I think is a great way.
[00:08:17] And I think the vast majority, and I'm talking like high 99th percentile of people would thrive with that kind of tourism, you know, and there's always going to be the others that just, Hey, we're just here to have a Mai Tai and a Maui brewing beer and sit on the beach. And you know what, that's okay too, because that's helping us as well.
[00:08:34] Yeah. So, but yeah, second would be a 501 C three, and we have a list of those on our Instagram mine as well. You know, my favorites right now are. thelegacyofaloha. org, that's a combined effort with ourselves and TS Restaurant Group. The Kukua Fund from the Hawaii Food and Wine Festival, that's Denise Yamaguchi, that benefits F& B workers.
[00:08:57] And then our fund, which is the NBC fire [00:09:00] fund, and that's run by the global empowerment mission. So when I say our fund, it's just the one that we're focused on raising money for, but it's actually the global empowerment mission. And I'll tell you, they were their boots on ground up in Elk, Washington with the fire in East Washington.
[00:09:15] Their boots on ground day one after the hurricane that just hit Florida. They're continuing aid in the Ukraine, build rebuilding homes on the front lines. These guys are just impressive with how quickly they move and how they can support the community.
[00:09:31] Bryan Murphy: Speaking of Florida, I know I have friends there and I know you have friends and business partners there.
[00:09:37] Uh, how is the situation there?
[00:09:39] Garrett Marrero - Maui Brewing: Absolutely. I think, you know, from one disaster to the next, if you will, um, It's unfortunate that, you know, more people now have to feel what that loss is of a home or a community or, you know, just pain and suffering. And so, you know, my heart goes out to Florida. Of course I have family and friends and business partners there.
[00:09:59] Fortunately. [00:10:00] Where my family lives, most of my friends are in areas that were not impacted other than, you know, maybe heavy rains, but you know, I think there has certainly been some devastation there as we've seen on the media, but it does look like the community and government there at least jumped into action right away.
[00:10:19] The charitable community as well came out to help. I heard something like 7, 000 homes without power. Uh, yesterday, which is just mind boggling, but we do definitely send our love that way.
[00:10:31] Bryan Murphy: Absolutely. I wanted to ask you a little bit more about the West side and businesses specifically past Lahaina.
[00:10:37] There's still a community there and businesses there. How are they doing?
[00:10:41] Garrett Marrero - Maui Brewing: Do you know? Yeah, that's a great question. So there's an entire community North of, you know, Lahaina proper, you know, the, the main kind of fire zone and where homes burned really stops at about, you know, kind of like. Le Alii, kind of Hawaiian homes area and mm-hmm.
[00:10:58] to [00:11:00] like where? The Civic center, post office. Wahi. Cooley area. Right. Okay. Yeah. Everything north of that. So Kaanapali all the way up into Kalua, you know, totally unscathed. There were a couple fires in Ka poly on the hillside. No homes burned minor in comparison to what happened at the the La Hana area.
[00:11:17] But Kahan is a, Kind of a, a very residential plus, uh, some condo tell tourism and I can tell you there's people there, but business is not great. We just reopened our restaurant there to, to hopefully be a place of respite somewhere you can grab a burger and a beer and spend time with friends. And so we've done a lower price point, simple menu.
[00:11:38] Most reason I even opened, I opened because my team was like, I want to go to work. Like, and I, you know, if we can make it, if we can make it work, we will. Yeah. I don't know how long we can sustain at those poor numbers, but we're going to do our best and hope that by December we start to see a little bit healthier of an [00:12:00] economy over there, but I can tell you the businesses on West side are suffering.
[00:12:03] I know entire boat companies that can no longer operate because their permit was West Maui and so they've laid off their hundred plus employees. Most restaurants are closed, right? We're, we're one of a couple dozen like small restaurants. That's including the, like, you know, little kind of poke shack type place or a food truck.
[00:12:24] So it's dismal. I'll tell you that to be honest, hopefully the holidays bring
[00:12:27] Bryan Murphy: more cheer. One of the last questions I had talking about, because we touched on it last week about the shelters, and how's that situation, thinking about just those basic needs, food, water, and shelter, how are those for this place residents of Lahaina?
[00:12:44] Food, water, and
[00:12:44] Garrett Marrero - Maui Brewing: shelter seem to be in pretty good shape. Place, you know, most everybody, if not everybody, I think all the shelters have been completely emptied at this point and people have been, you know, rehoused in either Airbnb condos or in [00:13:00] hotels. How long that's going to last, we don't know. I know typically FEMA is not going to pay for more than three or four months, but that's because they give you time to relocate to a town two hours away or another city in the state.
[00:13:15] We don't have that here in Hawaii. While most people have been moved back into homes, uh, that either some are staying with family or friends, you know, I've had my house full of people that have since moved to the mainland for the time being, you know, might as well take a trip now's the time, you know, typically you're going to get a few months out of the government, but I know there's.
[00:13:33] At least an appetite to find a way to fund longer term to these hotels, Airbnb. So, you know, I think while that's good, that then we'll put a drain on the availability of housing for tourism. So we'll hurt ourselves that way. I do think what we should be doing instead is focusing on getting the cleanup done as quick as possible.
[00:13:54] Of course, respectfully for the community, but then immediately starting to green light these [00:14:00] intermediate home solutions. Uh, and I say intermediate because you could within, you know, four to six months, we could deploy an entire community if we had government support in terms of the permitting, right. Or connection to water, that would be the biggest thing.
[00:14:14] You know, we could do a micro grid community as long as we can connect to water and ideally sewer, that would be perfect. You know, we have hundreds of various tiny home solutions and tiny homes, kind of a bad term, it seems because people don't fully understand what it is, but if you look at things like what clever tiny homes is doing, or you look at boxable, you look at a lot of these others.
[00:14:35] I mean, these legitimately, I know them because I've been considering buying one for a property that I thought about buying in Wyoming, you know, where they're like beautiful, easy to deploy. You know, you literally they show up on the property 24 hours later, you're moving in because all you're doing is folding it out or popping it up or whatever.
[00:14:56] Or even in some cases, just setting it down and connect it to water, [00:15:00] power, and sewer, you go going for it. And these also, when I spoke to the county, they were initially resistant, but I met with them yesterday. I think the cool part is, is that seeing them change their tune after what me walking through, like.
[00:15:14] Initially it was like, Oh, we don't want these temp homes that are just, you know, uh, going to be trashed later. And I said, no, these are long term solutions when our residents that don't have housing now or, or won't have hotel housing, they can shift into these places. In the now, and when their homes are rebuilt and they move back to those, we can then have those as affordable rental projects, communities, true communities, not, I'm not talking a field of RVs, and we've needed that for a long time anyways, so why build something that's short term for today?
[00:15:47] When we know we already need this long term, I think we can, you know, truly attack it from two angles. That's where donations to 501c3s will come in, is the rebuilding.
[00:15:57] Bryan Murphy: Okay, that makes sense. Well, cool, Garrett. [00:16:00] Thank you so much, man. It was great catching up, and I think this is super beneficial for people listening.
[00:16:04] Thank you.
[00:16:05] Garrett Marrero - Maui Brewing: Yeah. Yeah. Great to be here. And, and, uh, sorry you caught me on coffee this time.
[00:16:10] Bryan Murphy: Take care, guy. Aloha. Thanks again for tuning in to this episode of Hawaii's Best. Be sure to follow because coming up on Wednesday, we're going to be having David Yamashiro, who is the owner of Ululani's Shave Ice and they lost, uh, Location in Lahaina off Front Street.
[00:16:26] We're going to be hearing about his story and what he's doing with his team as well. So be sure to stay tuned for that. And until next time, be well, aloha.
[00:16:36] Announcer: Mahalo for listening to this episode of Hawaii's Best. To stay up to date on future episodes, please subscribe and visit us at hawaiibesttravel. com.[00:17:00]