Hawaii Papaya Direct sells one product: a box of fruit sent directly to the homes of its customers anywhere in the nation.
A single box of five papayas retails for $49.95 including free shipping anywhere in the United States. The company also offers a subscription model for repeat customers.
"The demand's there," said Eric Weinert, the company's owner and president of the Hawaii Papaya Industry Association. "There's a certain customer that is willing to pay for that tree-ripened Hawaii flavor."
The business started in 2021. Weinert declined to share annual revenue but said the company has several thousand customers and grew by 50% last year, with plans to repeat that growth this year, he said.
Saturday night is the cut-off for orders, which ship the following Tuesday via two-day FedEx, according to the company's website. While most papayas are sent to the Mainland by boat, this business allows riper fruit that couldn't make that journey to go straight to consumers' doorsteps, Weinert explained.
The fruit is packaged by Calavo Growers, which works with 90 farmers to source papayas, he said.
How did you get the idea to start this business? Well, I'm recently retired, and I was the general manager for Calavo, which is the largest fruit exporter of the papaya to the U.S. Mainland. They've been at it a long, long time here. I've been in agriculture my entire career here in Hawaii. I've been in agriculture for over 40 years, and I started tropical fruit businesses — grafting businesses and fruit businesses — and I have an entrepreneurial spirit. I just saw an opportunity.
How do transport the papayas and keep the costs low? My advantage is that I get a preferential FedEx rate, and FedEx offers flat rate two-day service from Hilo to anywhere in the United States.
How many employees are part of Hawaii Papaya Direct? We have me and my wife, who handles our customer service. ... I have a sister ... that does internet marketing for people, writes newsletters and those things. The three of us are really the only employees.
You mentioned you ship larger fruit than is normally available in grocery stores. How does that work? Because the fruit is sold typically by the pound on the Mainland, [Calavo Growers has] a harder time selling their larger fruit. But because our boxes aren't weighed, we sell five [papayas], so we take really, super large fruit, that they really don't have a demand for. But our customers really appreciate that large fruit because it doesn't matter how much it weighs — we sell by the count.
What have you learned about your customers? There's a couple of big surprises. One is I thought most of the fruit would be sent to people who knew Hawaii. And I thought they would be in the big cities on the West Coast. That's not true. When we looked at our distribution on a map, it was all 50 states. Some people even get our fruit that live in Honolulu, actually. But we ship to Alaska, Maine, Florida, New York, Washington, Chicago, Alabama. It goes to Montana and Idaho. It goes everywhere. And that really surprised us. We have several hundred people that are getting fruit on a subscription basis. ... You get 10% off, and you can say: 'I want it every week' or 'I want it every month' or whatever you want, in terms of regular shipment, and it's automatic. We've got some customers that get three boxes a week.
