Kauaʻi Coffee Company — Restaurant in Kauai

Great place to visit before or after you drive out Waimea Canyon. Kauai Coffee is a 3,000 acre coffee farm that used to grow sugar cane. Many of the employees are former or descendants of sugar cane plantation workers. It’s cool to be at a place that helps the local Kauai economy thrive with a delicious product that is being sold and consumed globally.

There are free guided tours during the day and a self-guided walking tour through the coffee farm (#accessibilityfriendly concrete walking path big enough for wheelchairs and walkers). There is also a continuous Kauai Coffee video playing in the self-serve sampling coffee area. Plenty of chairs and tables under shade to rest your feet.

Plenty of regular, decals, flavored, and estate grown only coffee samples to try. You can help yourself to try as many flavors and times of coffees as you like for free.

Kauai Coffee also sells “fast food” - sandwiches, salads, bottled water, desserts, cookies, sodas, coffee drinks, etc. - if you need a quick bite to eat. From the deck, you can see the rows and rows off coffee bushes and the Pacific Ocean.

#KidFriendly - Tucked away in a corner next to the coffee sampling area is a kid size picnic table with crayons and printed coloring sheets to keep little ones occupied while you can coffee sample. Women’s restroom has a diaper changing table.

There is a gift shop with plenty of Kauai Coffee Merchandise to Buy besides all their coffees (whole bean or ground), which some of the types are only sold here and not at Walmart, Foodland, or Costco. They sell Kpods and Cold Brew Coffee....

✅ What’s legit: • 100% Kauai-grown: They really do grow, harvest, and process all their beans on-island. • Large-scale, estate-grown: It’s the biggest coffee farm in the U.S., which gives them serious control over production. • Environmental practices: They’ve moved toward drip irrigation, pesticide reduction, and wet-process water recycling.

🤷‍♂️ What’s mid-tier: • Bean quality. • Most of what they grow is Arabica varietals (e.g., Typica, Red Catuai), but grown at low elevation (~500–800 ft), which can affect complexity and acidity. • It’s clean, smooth, low-acid coffee. Not especially complex or vibrant. • Roast profiles: They tend to over-roast slightly to appeal to tourists used to Starbucks or grocery store dark roasts. • No roast dates and generic flavor notes (rum barrel soaked, blueberry, etc.). Less for connoisseurs, more for volume and shelf life.

🛑 Where it falls short: • Not third-wave: If you’re used to single-origin or craft coffee beans, this won’t wow you. • Retail bags = stale: Without roast dates, it’s hard to know if you’re drinking fresh beans or something roasted months ago.

🧠 Bottom line: • Decent, not pure gimmick, • Worse than specialty, • Fine for hotel drip, • Not a hidden gem for coffee nerds.

If you’re looking for better Hawaiian coffee, look to higher-elevation Kona farms or Maui Mokka micro-lots. On Kauai, we loved...

Drove from the North Shore down here as my husband is a huge coffee fan. We have had Kaua'i Coffee often when in Hawai'i and he likes it.

This stop is fairly underwhelming for the long drive. Once you arrive, you are immediately in the gift shop, filled with tourist items like t-shirts, bulk coffee and honey. Right outside is a walk-up counter with different coffee and ice creams for sale. I had a guava Italian cream soda and my husband had a lava bar pop-cicle & a cup of coffee.

There is also about 8 coffees you can try. The walk-up counter will give you a large cup to fill with whatever coffee you liked from the sample carafes once you pay for a cup.

The coffee museum isn't a museum. It's two display cases next to their active office doors and the walk up counter, so you feel like you're in the way trying to read the signs in the cases. Most of it is just random new stuff with their coffee logo on it.

The self guided tour is just a loop around some coffee plants, a replica coffee sorter and an empty drying greenhouse. There are 11 signs that you can read about coffee.

With gas more than $5.50 a gallon, I don't think it's worth the drive all the way down here. It was generally underwhelming.

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