As CEO of Hawaiian coffee company KonaRed Corporation, Kyle Redfield (Econ’06) keeps one thing in mind: Sustainability. Annually, the Hawaiian Islands alone produce 40 million tons of coffee waste, and the Kona-based company is using the often-discarded coffee fruit — the fruit surrounding the coffee bean — in its products to cut down on waste. Here, the Winter Park, Colo., native talks his time at CU �鶹ӰԺ, super fruits and the future of coffee.  

You’ve worked with two companies that focus on super fruits: POM Wonderful and KonaRed. What’s your draw to them? 

Introducing something brand new to the food chain is really exciting. I love health and wellness — that’s the way I live my life, and that draws me to these types of products. A lot of what I did at POM was taking the excess pomegranate which amounted to truckloads of waste and turned that into one of the most profitable divisions within the company. When I joined KonaRed, I saw an opportunity for an entire industry that wasn’t taking care of their waste stream. Coffee fruit is the No. 1 untapped food source on the planet as coffee is the No. 2 traded commodity behind oil. That’s a lot of waste. Whenever you work in an industry that established, there’s going to be a lot of opportunities.

Why does KonaRed focus on the coffee fruit?

The discarded coffee fruit is a problem for many farmers. The bean (seed) is removed from the fruit (also called the coffee cherry), and then the leftover cherry skin is discarded, amounting to a lot of waste. When you discard the fruit, it starts rotting immediately, which then attracts critters and bad smells. It also damages the soil, which hurts the farmers because they can’t grow more fruit. We use the coffee fruit in every one of our products by making a concentrate juice out of it. We then add it to products like our cold brew coffee and supplements. It’s really our main ingredient.

Starbucks also just launched a new product with coffee fruit in it called cascara. We’re happy they and other people are using the fruit now, too, because it drastically reduces waste. Forty million tons of waste are gone just in Hawaii annually by using the fruit.

Since your coffee comes from Hawaii, do you visit the plantations often?

I go there once a quarter, and definitely during harvest season, which is July through December. Our farming infrastructure is there, and we are always working on continuous improvement to our supply chain. Plus, it is not a bad place to have to work.

Hawaii is the only place in the U.S. where coffee is grown.

What’s unique about Kona coffee in general?

Hawaii is the only place in the U.S. where coffee is grown. Since it’s the only U.S. manufactured and grown coffee, there are better regulations and better standards for it. Also, the climate for growing coffee there is incredible.

What advice can you give coffee drinkers to be more sustainable?

Use a reusable container to drink your coffee. If you’re going to go to a coffee shop, bring your own mug. If you are going to consume a ready-to-drink variety, like ours, always recycle the bottles.

What are some of your favorite memories of your time at CU �鶹ӰԺ?

�鶹ӰԺ holds a special place in my heart. I grew up going to football games as my dad had season tickets. When I came to CU after playing a year of junior college baseball, I played club baseball. While it wasn’t a D1 sport, the experience taught me so much about leadership. I also loved being at the Rec Center playing pick-up basketball, which is something I still enjoy doing today.

Was there a time at CU that solidified your decision to pursue a business career?

In my junior and senior years, I took higher-level economics classes. The concepts were easy for me to learn, and they made sense to me. Those classes convinced me there was going to be something I could apply to my future.

As CEO, what does your day-to-day look like?

I little bit of everything. I don’t consider us a small start-up anymore. We have to keep everyone safe and keep the operation going, while focusing on sales and marketing. I always want to uphold our product quality, and continue down our path of creating sustainable, healthy products. Upholding our company culture is also something I focus on daily.

What drives your work?

Certainly, wanting to make a difference. As we work every day, we’re spending time away from our families and we’re using our time and resources. I want to make my friends and family proud. I also want to represent CU �鶹ӰԺ well. I bleed black and gold.

What’s your favorite piece of career advice? 

You have to hire the right team. One person can only do so much.

What do you look for when hiring?

Attitude first and foremost, then experience, then education.

How do you drink your coffee?

I drink KonaRed’s original coffee with a splash of milk. I don’t drink anything else at this point.

Are there any food trends happening right now that you’re into at the moment?

I’m lucky enough to be participating in the fastest-growing segment in the food and beverage industry, which is cold-brew coffee. But I’m also very intrigued by kombucha.

In the next couple of years, you’re really going to see cascara and coffee fruit become a huge development for coffee.

Condensed and edited.

Photos courtesy KonaRed

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10 Places to Grab a Coffee on or near Campus

1. , Norlin Library
2. , ATLAS Institute
3. , Center for Community
4. , East Campus Biotech Building
5. , Center for Community
6. , Sustainability, Energy and Environment Complex
7. , University Memorial Center
8. , The Hill
9. , The Hill
10. , College Avenue

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While traveling the world to understand everything there is to know about caffeine, Murray Carpenter uncovers some shocking surprises.

Freelance journalist Murray Carpenter&�Բ�����;(�ʲ��⳦��’85).

The sour stench of ammonia overwhelmed Murray Carpenter (Psych’85) as he arrived at the chemical plant he traveled across the world to see. Resembling a miniature oil refinery in a deteriorating industrial park, the plant’s complicated network of pipes and tanks barely stood out among the numerous neighboring pharmaceutical plants. Three workers taking a smoke break outside nervously shifted their gaze from Carpenter to his translator as they poked their way around the gated and guarded entrance. In Shijiazhuang, China, Westerners weren’t a common sight.

Carpenter, a freelance journalist, was standing at the foot of the largest synthetic caffeine plant in the world. It shipped 4.7 million pounds of caffeine to the U.S. in 2011, and most Americans who have consumed soft drinks since then likely have consumed its caffeine. The plant, along with two other plants in China and one in India, synthesizes more than half of the caffeine Americans consume.

He was denied entrance to the factory, which only heightened his resolve to find answers to where caffeine comes from and the effects it has, man-made or not, on consumers. His inquiries took him on a global adventure to such places as the hilly tropics of Colombian coffee plantations, sleepy Mexican cacao farms and a gigantic decaffeination plant in Texas. The culmination of his research resulted in his book Caffeinated: How Our Daily Habit Helps, Hurts, and Hooks Us, published this year.

Each stop on his three-year journey brought him to a deeper understanding of caffeine, fulfilling a curiosity that began nearly three decades earlier. As a CU-�鶹ӰԺ student, Carpenter frequented such coffee shops as Brillig Works, Trident Café and now-shuttered Penny Lane and was fascinated by how caffeine helped him focus while studying. He wrote a paper on the subject his senior year.

Once he began his research for the book, however, he experienced how interested others were in the substance, too.

“When people found out what I was doing, they would start peppering me with questions,” Carpenter, 52, says. “People really are endlessly fascinated with caffeine. Yet there’s not a lot of consumer information out there because it’s an uncomfortable conversation for Starbucks, Coca-Cola, 5-Hour Energy or any of those companies to have and to discuss the fact that they are in the business of selling a drug that makes you feel good.”

This “uncomfortable” aspect was revealed to Carpenter throughout his research into the synthetic caffeine industry, especially on his brief excursion to the Shijiazhuang caffeine factory. It was in stark contrast to the personal walking and tasting tours given to him by friendly owners of lush coffee bean plantations or tropical cacao groves.

The synthetic caffeine industry’s doors were sealed tight.

“I tried to get permission to visit these plants because I was very interested in seeing the [synthetic] process but I couldn’t get access,” Carpenter says. “I think the industry is not as clean as we expect it, and certainly we know that the FDA is having trouble inspecting some pharmaceutical plants.”

How Much Caffeine Are You Drinking?

Coffee drinks

• Single shot espresso—approx. 75 mg (per Starbucks website)
• Mocha—approx 175 mg per 16-ounce (grande), (per Starbucks website)
• Starbucks Bold Pick of the day—approx. 330 mg per 16 ounces (grande) (per Starbucks website)

Soda

• Coca Cola —34 mg per 12 ounce can
• Dr. Pepper—41 mg per 12 ounces
• Diet Coke—45 mg per 12 ounces
• Starbucks Refreshers—50 mg per 12 ounce can
• Mountain Dew—54 mg per 12 ounces
• Pepsi Max—69 mg per 12 ounces

Energy drinks

• Red Bull can—80 mg per 8.4 ounce can
• Mountain Dew Kickstart—92 mg per 16 ounces 
• Monster—184 mg per 16 ounces (per Consumer Reports)
• 5-hour Energy—215 mg per 1.9 oz shot (per Consumer Reports)
• Kraft Mio Energy (concentrate, 12 servings)—720 mg per 1.08 oz (labeled amount)

Tea

• Stash Premium Green Tea—36 mg per six ounces
• Twining's English Breakfast Tea—25 mg per six ounces
• Lipton tea—47 mg per six ounces
• (All teas were made with with 5-minute steep)
• Chai Tea Latte—approx. 95 mg per 16 ounce (grande) size, according to Starbucks

- See more at:

Synthetic caffeine factories are not often inspected by the FDA, but if not more concerning, neither are pharmaceutical-producing factories. After a 2007 review of the FDA’s foreign inspections, the U.S. Government Accountability Office determined it would take the FDA 13 years to inspect all foreign drug manufacturing plants. The office also noted in a 2011 report on drug safety that the FDA is far from achieving foreign drug inspection rates comparable to those of U.S. inspections.

Until the FDA creates a system for inspecting overseas plants, Carpenter says it is nearly impossible to know for sure under what conditions caffeine is created. Yet Americans are consuming several million pounds of synthetic caffeine a year, often from bottles or cans that fail to have information on whether the caffeine is natural — coming from coffee, tea or cacao plants — or synthetic.

“It’s a conversation that I think a lot of people aren’t interested in having because once you start talking about natural caffeine, it raises the question, ‘Wait, then where is the rest of this stuff coming from?’ ” Carpenter says, adding that sodas, energy drinks and many of the newer caffeine products on the market use synthetic caffeine because it is much less expensive to use than natural caffeine.

... once you start talking about natural caffeine, it raises the question, 'Wait, then where is the rest of this stuff coming from?'

Synthetic production increased during the World War II era when soft drinks gained popularity and coffee consumption reached its peak. Americans were consuming 46 gallons of coffee per person a year on average.

“Americans drink a lot less coffee now than we did in the 1950s,” Carpenter says. “As coffee consumption has declined, soft drink consumption has skyrocketed. Around 1950, Americans were drinking about 11 gallons of soft drinks annually, and now we’re drinking 51 gallons [per person].”

The first American synthetic caffeine factory was created in 1945 by Monsanto — now known for genetically modified crops. Pharmaceutical giant Pfizer soon followed. Unable to compete with the cheaper-produced caffeine abroad, however, all synthetic caffeine production eventually moved abroad.

“When I started reporting this book, I knew that soft drinks had caffeine in them, but I didn’t know where it came from,” Carpenter says. “When I asked people about it, most assumed that it had come from the decaffeination of coffee. And some of it does. But a lot of caffeine is created from chemical precursors in these pharmaceutical plants.”

Synthetic caffeine is created when uracil is used to produce theophylline, a compound structurally and pharmacologically similar to caffeine and found in small amounts in cocoa beans and tea leaves. It is finished off with a dose of methyl chloride, which occurs naturally in low levels in the environment. Acute short-term exposure to high concentrations of methyl chloride in humans has caused severe neurological effects, according to the Environmental Protection Agency.

Yet in its pure form, the chemical compound of caffeine is the same whether it is man-made or natural and there are no apparent health risks from using one over the other, Carpenter explains.

As coffee consumption has declined, soft drink consumption has skyrocketed. Around 1950, Americans were drinking about 11 gallons of soft drinks annually, and now we're drinking 51 gallons [per person].

Regardless of caffeine’s origins, it plays a major part in most Americans’ lives. Studies show caffeine, nothing more than a bitter white powder, sharpens the mind and improves mood. It blocks the adenosine receptors in the brain that trigger sleepiness, thus providing a perceived energy boost. Some athletes use caffeine to enhance performance.

Just 100 milligrams a day, about the amount of caffeine in a small coffee or three cans of soda, can lead to a physical dependence, Carpenter explains. This means that many people need to consume it to avoid the unpleasant withdrawal symptoms of headaches, muscle pain, weariness, apathy or depression.

Despite this, a nutrition and healthy eating report from the Mayo Clinic says that up to 400 milligrams of caffeine a day appears to be safe for most healthy adults. That’s roughly the amount of caffeine in four cups of brewed coffee, 10 cans of cola or two “energy shot” drinks.

So is caffeine bad for us?

A habitual caffeine dose can grow into a bigger health issue if the level of caffeine intake increases. Carpenter reports in his book that a quarter of a teaspoon causes a racing heart, sweating and anxiety, and a tablespoon — 50 cups of coffee or 200 cups of tea — can kill you. For some, only a small dose may lead to stronger symptoms, such as acute anxiety and panic attacks. Others may not feel its effects at all because of an increased tolerance, which occurs when the body develops more adenosine receptors to stop caffeine’s blocking effects.

“Most of us use the amount that’s good for us,” Carpenter says.

Thanks to the extensiveness of Carpenter’s caffeine research and his March book release, reporters from National Public Radio, the Huffington Post, The Atlantic and TIME have made him their go-to source for caffeine-related stories.

“His book blew me away,” says Mark Overly, president and coffee buyer of Denver’s Kaladi Coffee, who met Carpenter at the 2010 World Coffee Conference in Guatemala. “It was fascinating and horrifying at the same time.”

Photography © stillfx/Veer (coffee beans); Patrick Campbell (book cover); Margot Carpenter (Murray Carpenter); Jole Robison (issue cover)

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