Award Winning 100% Kona Coffee

Our grandparents were immigrants from Japan seeking a better life working at sugar plantations in the Hawaiian Islands. Walter Kunitake is a third generation coffee grower. His grandparents began growing in the early 1900s.

His parents in the 1950's - 1970's operated a large coffee farm with about 10,000 trees. Separately, we planted the Guatamalan arabica coffee trees in 1990 at our Country Samurai estate in Holualoa at 1500 feet elevation.

Sharlene Kunitake, the better half, grew up in the city of Honolulu and earned her

degree in business administration (BBA) at the University of Hawaii at Manoa with a major in Accounting and also earned her Masters in Business Administration (MBA).

After moving to Kona, she became the best grower of vegetables for healthy home use and give aways.

Walter earned his BBA, MBA and Ph.D. in business administration. Also a CPA,

he taught at the University of Hawaii and The Pennsylvania State University.

One common thread in this union between Walter and Sharlene was the clear

importance of honesty, hard work and “do your best attitude,” which were all inherited from our ancestors.

In 1997, we began our full-time commitment to Kona coffee when we opened a retail outlet at which time the core values of Country Samurai Coffee Company was established.

We have three children that grew up in the coffee estate journey and they all had

their hands in the spirit of the core values we embraced.

The name, Kunitake, literally translates from “kuni” as country and “take” as

samurai and therein captures the spirit of who we are.

We closed our store front in Kailua-Kona in 2020 when Covid hit, but continue the online retailing.