About Us
TWO FRIENDS. ONE PASSION.
Meet the Team
Meet Peter
I’m Pete—third-generation in Hawaiʻi agriculture, farmer, cacao obsessive, professional problem solver, and someone who apparently decided regular farming wasn’t complicated enough...
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Meet John
I’m John—orchard manager, horticulture guy, fermentation magician, builder of everything, professional plant overthinker, and the person usually trying to turn one of Pete’s “I’ve got an idea” moments into something that actually works...
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An Unlikely Place for Exceptional Cacao
CHALLENGE CREATES CHARACTER
Ten Acres of Cacao
At Mililani Estate Cacao Farm, we are a diverse 140-acre working farm nestled in the heart of Central Oʻahu. Among our crops of breadfruit, banana, avocado, and taro, 10 acres are dedicated to cacao—an extraordinary crop to find thriving in this part of the island.
Cacao naturally flourishes in humid rainforest environments beneath the protective canopy of other trees. Central Oʻahu, however, is known for its hot, dry climate—conditions that make cultivating cacao both challenging and remarkable. Through careful irrigation, thoughtful fertilization, and years of dedicated farming, our cacao trees have not only adapted but developed a flavor all their own.
FIRST HARVEST
Gold on the First Batch
We celebrated the farms first cacao harvest in late 2019, when the trees reached three years of age. What emerged was chocolate distinguished by exceptionally bright, vibrant, and fruity notes. We believe the demanding growing conditions contribute to this distinctive character, creating flavors that beautifully reflect the land where the cacao was raised.
The quality was apparent from the very first batch. We received multiple honors, including Gold for Best Dark Chocolate at the prestigious Chocolate Alliance Awards in 2023—an exceptional achievement for the estate’s inaugural harvest.
GROWN IN HAWAII. ENJOYED BY YOU.
Come Walk the Orchard
Today, we invite visitors to experience our story firsthand. On a guided walking tour through the working cacao orchard, you’ll discover how cacao is grown and harvested before being carefully transformed from bean to bar. Along the way, our guides will share insight into Hawaiʻi’s unique agricultural landscape, the estate’s cultivation practices, and the craftsmanship behind every batch.
The journey concludes with a cacao tasting, offering the opportunity to enjoy freshly crafted, award-winning chocolate right where it begins. Whether you’re drawn by a love of chocolate, an interest in agriculture, or curiosity about Hawaiʻi’s local farming culture, we offer an immersive—and delicious—connection to the land, the craft, and the remarkable potential of locally grown cacao.
Chocolate Made With Love
What Makes Us Special
- Hawaii is the only U.S. state with a climate suited to growing cacao commercially — a genuinely rare agricultural experience!
- Our orchard's unusual growing conditions (hot and dry, rather than the humid rainforest shade cacao typically prefers) are believed to be exactly what gives our cacao its bright, fruity character.
- Our beans have already won gold for Best Dark Chocolate at the Chocolate Alliance Awards, and are used by some of Hawaii's leading bean-to-bar chocolate makers.
- We're part of a small but growing group of Hawaii cacao farms and chocolatiers working to put Hawaii-grown chocolate on the map the way Kona coffee put Hawaii coffee on the map.
About Pete
I’m Pete—third-generation in Hawaiʻi agriculture, farmer, cacao obsessive, professional problem solver, and someone who apparently decided regular farming wasn’t complicated enough.
My family planted our cacao in Mililani in 2015. What started as another crop on the farm turned into something I became completely consumed by. The deeper I got into cacao, the more I realized there was to learn—and that was pretty much the end of having normal hobbies.
I’m not a chocolatier. I’m a farmer.
My obsession is everything that happens before chocolate—the soil, trees, flowers, genetics, pods, harvest, fermentation, drying, and the hundred little decisions that determine whether a bean ends up ordinary or exceptional.
And yes, I actually love cacao that much. On a normal day in the orchard, I’ll crush two or three entire pods myself. Some people have a coffee problem. I have access to ten acres of cacao, which is arguably worse.
In 2023, cacao from our Mililani farm earned Gold at the Cacao of Excellence competition, putting our beans among some of the best cacao in the world. That was a pretty incredible moment—but mostly it confirmed something I’d already started to believe:
Hawaiʻi can grow world-class cacao.
For me, Mililani Estate Cacao is about seeing just how far we can take that.
I’m constantly experimenting. Different fermentation methods, temperatures, timing, drying techniques, orchard practices—measuring things, changing things, occasionally breaking things, rebuilding them better, and chasing improvements most normal people probably wouldn’t notice.
But that’s farming.
Agriculture has been part of my family in Hawaiʻi for three generations, and I take a lot of pride in carrying that forward in my own slightly unconventional way. My dad was the pioneer that decided to start the first orchard style cacao farm in Hawaii and I get to take that to the next level. Making something my daughter will be proud of one day—that means more to me than the awards.
What I want Mililani Estate Cacao to become is bigger than just producing great beans. I want people to come here and actually experience cacao—walk through the orchard, crack open a pod, taste cacao fresh from the farm, see a fermentation working, and understand the ridiculous amount of effort hiding inside something most of us have known our entire lives simply as “chocolate.”
So if you visit the farm and see me walking around with my pruners, eating my second cacao pod before lunch, staring suspiciously into a fermentation box, or covered in grease because I got distracted fixing a tractor...
Everything is operating normally.
Welcome to Mililani Estate Cacao.
Pete HixManaging Partner
About John
I’m John—orchard manager, horticulture guy, fermentation magician, builder of everything, professional plant overthinker, and the person usually trying to turn one of Pete’s “I’ve got an idea” moments into something that actually works.
My background is in horticulture and wine, which, as it turns out, is a pretty good way to accidentally end up obsessed with cacao.
Because great cacao has a lot in common with great wine. It starts with the land. Variety matters. Weather matters. Harvest matters. Fermentation matters—a lot. And small decisions made along the way can completely change what you taste in the finished product.
That’s the part that hooked me.
At Mililani Estate Cacao, my world is the orchard. I’m focused on tree health, pruning, nutrition, irrigation, flowering, fruit development, harvest timing, fermentation, and all the little details that most people will never see—but eventually taste.
Petes all over the place at a million miles an hour. I'm the one trying to throw a net over him while being the backbone of the orchard.
It works surprisingly well.
We’re constantly learning from the orchard and pushing ourselves to make each harvest better than the last. Cacao will humble you pretty quickly if you think you’ve figured it out. Every fermentation is a little different, every season throws something new at you, and the trees have a remarkable ability to ignore whatever plans you made for the week.
That’s also what makes it interesting.
What I enjoy most is being part of a farm that isn’t satisfied with simply growing cacao. We want to understand it. We want to know why something worked, why something didn’t, and what we can change next time to make the cacao better.
There’s a lot happening behind every piece of great chocolate long before anyone unwraps a bar.
My job is to obsess over that part.
So if you visit Mililani Estate Cacao and see someone quietly staring at a tree, checking irrigation, taking temperatures, smelling a fermentation box, or explaining why Pete needs… to stop starting three more things before we’ve finished the first one, that’s probably me.
JohnOrchard Manager & Resident Voice of Reason