Growing Aloha | with Ola Brew’s Nahealani Breeland
For Naehalani Breeland, business has never been just about profit. It’s about people, place, and purpose. Raised on Molokaʻi, she co-founded Ola Brew with one vision: to grow Hawaiʻi’s agricultural future and put ownership back in the hands of the lāhui.
Roots first
Molokaʻi shaped Naehalani Breeland. No stoplights. No fast food. No movie theaters. Just ocean, fishponds, and a life grounded in practice.
“It’s a very laxed lifestyle, but very much grounded and anchored in Hawaiian culture. There’s everything you could imagine in the outdoors.”
Her mom was her model. She worked with the mediation center, sat on boards for sustainable agriculture, and poured her energy into helping families through hard times.
“The spirit of aloha runs thick and deep in her,” Breeland says, and those values of arts, service, and giving back later became Ola Brew’s operating system.
From noni shots to a movement
Naehalani’s first chapter in food and bev was with Hawaiian Ola, a company built around noni shots. The noni fruit was used in traditional Hawaiian medicine for its health-giving properties. Hawaiian Ola bottled those properties into energy and immunity shots, sourcing local ingredients to strengthen Hawaiʻi’s agricultural economy.
But there was a problem. Hawaiʻi imports over 85% of its food today, a stark contrast to the self-sufficiency of our kūpuna who sustained whole communities from land and sea.
Breeland and her team knew that just sourcing local ingredients wasn’t enough. They had to manufacture locally too.
In 2016, they found a warehouse in Kailua Kona and started canning and bottling at home. Then came the pivot that changed everything: using B grade fruit to make hard cider.
“We saw all the fruits that were going to waste throughout the state because they were B grade fruits. They weren’t aesthetically pleasing to look at, so you couldn’t sell them in stores. They don’t look beautiful, but they still taste great.”
From there, they expanded to beer, seltzers, hard tea, and more.
The impact? Ola Brew grew from just $30,000 a year in local fruit purchases to more than $1.8 million, money that went straight into the hands of Hawaiʻi’s farmers and back into the local economy.
community owned by design
Ola Brew didn’t just serve the community. It invited the community to own it.
Thanks to the 2016 JOBS Act, which opened private investment to everyday people, Ola launched its first crowdfund with investment tickets starting at $100.
“Our customers are now our shareholders. When they walk into the store and they look at the shelf, they’re going to choose Ola because that’s their company.”
Today, thousands of shareholders, most from Hawaiʻi, own a piece of the mission. With ownership comes advocacy, pride, and word of mouth that money cannot buy.
reviving a first: KĪ ʻOkolehao
Naehalani’s team also spent years experimenting with a Hawaiʻi-grown spirit rooted in the kī (ti) plant. To test its potential, they submitted a sample to the San Francisco World Spirits Competition, known as the “Grammys of the spirits world.”
“The funniest part is that we sent that product in a plastic bottle with blue tape on it saying, ‘this is FDA approved, enjoy,’” Naehalani explains. “The president of the Tasting Alliance of the organization said that it was the laughing stock of competition, but the plastic bottle kept coming into the next round and the next round.”
Their entry earned double gold and best in class. That win unlocked land leases and a distillery build-out in Hilo, putting Hawaiʻi spirits back on the global map.
“We are able to now make a product that is 100% Hawaii grown. And that’s been our goal the entire time.”
built to bend, not break
Starting a brewery was never a straight path. None of Ola’s founders had opened one before, but that inexperience became freedom. For Naehalani, adversity has always been training.
“I can take these [successes and failures] and put them into my tool belt. I now have all these different ways that I can approach different situations. We learn to fail fast. Move on to the next best practice or the next way that we can succeed.”
That mindset carried them through COVID, when Ola had to shut its taproom for seven months. But, staff and shareholders kept showing up even after layoffs, volunteering to help the company pivot to retail. Community belief and perseverance kept them alive.
what we can steal
Naehalani’s journey shows us a lot:
Purpose first. The mission to grow Hawaiʻi agriculture stayed the same, even as the form shifted from noni shots to beer to spirits.
Share ownership. Lean on your community. Lean on those with a shared purpose and goal.
Fail forward. Inexperience didn’t stop her and her team. Starting a brewery without credentials, Naehalani treated every mistake as training. Proof that adversity can be your greatest teacher.
As Naehalani puts it:
“Our community truly owns Ola. When they invest, they’re not just buying a share, they’re part of the mission. That pride is what makes this company thrive.”
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