Papayas are a delicate fruit, according to Eric Weinert, president of the Hawaii Papaya Industry Association and owner of Hawaii Papaya Direct. But they are also unusual, especially the fruit from Hawaii.
“Most of the papaya in Hawaii is grown in the District of Puna on the Big Island, which is volcanically very new,” Weinert says. “The richness and nutrients of that new volcanic soil gives Hawaii’s papaya a unique and really good taste.”
Weinert says Hawaiian papayas are usually either the solo or rainbow varieties; smaller orange-fleshed fruits compared to the red-fleshed papaya of South America.
“Papaya is unique in that it fruits year-round,” he continues. “They have a couple of peaks and valleys, but there’s always fruit all year round in Hawaii. That makes it good from a marketing point of view so people can always have it in the stores.”
Getting Hawaiian papayas to stores outside of Hawaii is an undertaking. It is roughly 2,400 miles to reach the nearest mainland port in Southern California. Weinert explains that usually Hawaiian papayas are shipped by boat to ports along the West Coast and then trucked deeper inland. Papayas that consumers find in stores on the East Coast or the eastern half of the country are likely from South America.
To add to the complication, if temperatures fall below about 55 degrees, unripe papaya — those that haven’t started showing some yellow — won’t ripen properly. When each fruit bears the cost of transport to its customer, having an unsuccessful eating experience in the form of a fruit that won’t ripen is a problem, Weinert says.
Direct from source to consumer
Since most large retailers want unripe papayas — thinking that will give them the most amount of time to sell them — Hawaiian papaya growers and shippers often have a lot of almost-ripe and ripe fruit that is too ripe to ship by boat. Weinert says many of the papaya companies were throwing away these ripe fruits. That presented an opportunity.
Enter Hawaii Papaya Direct, a bespoke direct-to-consumer online venture.
“We FedEx these things two-day air, and we start with the ripe fruit. We never refrigerate them. We get them out of the field, pack them and ship them to a person, and they will end up with ripe fruit,” Weinert explains. “That online business has grown 50% year over year for the past three years.”
He says that he has shipped directly to consumers in every state, including the Big Island of Hawaii. Weinert says a lot of the business is people who give the five-fruit boxes as gifts. But there’s something interesting about the people who buy them, he notes.
“Almost everyone of those people — when they call and we talked to them — have a relationship with Hawaii in one way or another,” Weinert says. “There’s some kind of magical relationship with Hawaii.”
The business is individualized to the wants and needs of the customers. Weinert says he talks with customers regularly, and Hawaii Papaya Direct will pack to a customer’s specifications on ripeness to the extent possible. It doesn’t always work out, however, given the logistics challenges.
“Not every shipment is good. We put good fruit in a box, but once it leaves us, things can happen because it’s alive,” he says. “But our deal is we are committed to happy customers, so we make it right regardless of the cost. We want a happy customer.”