Greenes to bring Hawaiian Kona coffee to Town
The Bad Ass Coffee of Hawaii, named after the donkeys, chosen for the task for being tenacious and hard-working,
“We will be bringing three locations to the Knoxville area,” said Karen Greene franchise co-owner of The Bad Ass Coffee of Hawaii with her husband, Jason Greene. “We are hoping to open our first store here in Farragut by early fall — August or September. That’s the goal … we are ready to get it out there.
“I’ve lived in Farragut for 20 years now, and I love this community,” she added. “I wanted my first location to be in Farragut.
“We are in the negotiating phases, right now, with a location. I can’t say we’re there yet because no one has signed on the dotted line … but we are very excited to bring this to Farragut.”
The Bad Ass Coffee of Hawaii is very close to the model of Starbucks and other coffee shops, she noted.
“It is a café,” Karen said. “You can go in and you can sit or you can sit outside at one of the bistro tables or under a patio.
“We do specialize in Hawaiian Kona coffee, and we also have some treats,” she added. “We’re not like a full-blown restaurant (but) we do have snacks, sandwiches, things of that nature, and what’s fun about our products (is) they all have that Hawaiian flair.
With the Kona coffee, “we’re going to have all the traditional coffee drinks,” Karen said. “We’ll also have what we call coffee coolers, which are the blended drinks. We will have a really neat line of energy drinks, which is called Mana for Hawaii.
“One thing that’s very unique to our store — to my knowledge, no one else is doing it in the entire coffee market — is our iced coffee drinks are made not with ice cubes but with Kona coffee cubes.
Additionally, “We sell the bags of the beans; we sell the pods for Keurig machines,” Karen said.
“We fell in love with this coffee years ago, and I couldn’t believe Knoxville didn’t have it,” she added. “I thought this would do so well here. At the time, I never dreamed it would be me bringing it.
“What’s drawn me into this (company) is it’s a fun brand, it’s very colorful; it’s such a fun atmosphere. It’s very beachy … beach music playing.”
Another draw is the company’s charity, Give A Hoof, a donkey rescue organization, which receives a portion of the proceeds.
“There are lot of people in the Farragut community who go to seaside — to Destin — for spring break and the summer,” she said. “So a lot of people are already familiar with this brand. There are so many of these (coffee shops) in Florida.
“East Tennessee’s getting ready to have three locations: starting with Farragut, then hopefully University of Tennessee campus and West Knoxville as well,” Karen added.
