Hawaiʻi is the only US state where cacao grows commercially, and the Big Island has the highest concentration of farms in the state. Tours range from 1-hour tastings at $30 to 3.5-hour deep-dives at $125. Most operations are on the Hamakua coast north of Hilo or in South Kona, where cacao often grows alongside coffee on the same working farms.
Eleven operators are listed below, organized by location. Use the comparison table to find farms near where you’re staying and filter by price and duration. Each section covers what the tour actually includes.
Table of contents
- Map with all tour locations
- Chocolate tours near Hilo (7)
- Chocolate tours near Kona (3)
- Chocolate tours in Puna (1)
- Buy Hawaiian chocolate online
- Bonus: vanilla farm tours
Table of Contents
- Map with all tour locations
- Chocolate tours near Hilo (7)
- Chocolate tours near Kona (3)
- Chocolate tours in Puna (1)
- Buy Hawaiian chocolate online
- Bonus: vanilla farm tours
Big Island chocolate farm tours: map and price comparison
All tours on this page are plotted below by location, with price and duration listed for quick comparison. Use the map to find farms near where you’re staying before reading the full descriptions below.
Prices, details, and map locations below last verified June 2026.
| Name | Duration | Price |
|---|---|---|
| 1Original Hawaiian Chocolate Farm (Details ↓) | 1 hour | $30 |
| 2Lavaloha (Details ↓) | 1 hour | $33 |
| 3Puna Gold Estate (Details ↓) | 1 hour | $35 |
| 4Ua Hānai Orchards (Details ↓) | 1.5 hours | $40 |
| 5Kulike Organic Cacao Farm (Details ↓) | 1.5 hours | $40 |
| 6Puna Chocolate (Details ↓) | 2 hours | $40 |
| 7Kuaiwi Farm (Details ↓) | 2 hours | $50 |
| 8Hilo Sharks Cacao farm (Details ↓) | 3 hours | $75 |
| 9Hawaiian Vanilla Company (Details ↓) | 2 hours | $89.50 |
| 10Honokaʻa Chocolate Co (Details ↓) | 2 hours | $95 |
| 11Hamakua chocolate (Details ↓) | 3 hours | $99 |
| 12Mānoa Chocolate at Honoliʻi Orchards (Details ↓) | 3.5 hours | $125 |
Chocolate Farm Tours near Hilo and the Hamakua coast
The windward side of the island gets over 100 inches of rain a year along this stretch, which is why the corridor from Papaikōu north through Honokaʻa has the highest concentration of cacao farms on the Big Island. When the sugarcane industry collapsed here in the 1990s, some farmers transitioned to cacao as a viable alternative.
Most operations here are small-scale, certified organic or working toward it, and tours often mean meeting the person who actually tends the land. Hilo is a convenient base for nearly all of them.
Honokaʻa Chocolate Co. (Honokaʻa)
Honokaʻa Chocolate Co. runs their VIP tour from the farm on Old Mamalahoa Highway, about five minutes outside Honokaa. Founder Mike Pollard leads each session himself: a cacao orchard walk, fresh pod tasting when available, and a 45-minute structured tasting of nine award-winning single-origin chocolates. The tour covers the full process from tree to bar, including the science behind fermentation and flavor development.
Honokaʻa Chocolate Co. Cacao Farm Tour
One of the few places on the Big Island where you can taste fresh cacao from the tree and follow it through to finished single-origin chocolate. $95, 2 hours, groups of 12 max.
from:
$95
What is a suggested tour?Our suggested tours are hand-picked tours that receive consistent good reviews, give back to the community, and work hard to minimize their impact on the environment. Read more about these tours on our website.Groups are capped at 12 and tend to fill at least a week out, so book ahead through their online calendar. Children under 10 are welcome, though the retail store and production facility in Honokaʻa town is a more practical option for families with very young kids. The tour runs rain or shine.
A Cacao farm tour at the Honokaʻa Chocolate Co. Next to a tour of the cacao orchard you also get to taste a variety of their own chocolate and other local products. Image credit: Sarah Anderson Photography.
Mānoa Chocolate at Honoliʻi Orchards (Hilo)
(13 minutes North of Hilo) Experience the most in-depth cacao tours on the island at the Honoliʻi Orchards. This 3.5 hour long tour is held 3 times a week and only available to adults and kids of age 9 and up.
The tour includes a visit to the orchards, a deep-dive into the fascinating science of cacao post processing (fermentation!), and a long visit to the tasting room that includes a discussion on the origins of chocolate, the key differences between craft chocolate and mass-produced commodity chocolate, and tasting of 10 single-origin craft chocolate bars, all sourced from various farms across the Hawaiian Archipelago. This tasting is our favorite, when Gerrit visited, the 10-bar comparison was a sharp illustration of how origin affects flavor we’ve seen on a tour here.
In addition to the chocolate tasting, you’ll also get to try fresh cacao juice, roasted cacao beans, chocolate-covered macadamias, cacao tea, and other seasonal fruits and farm-fresh treats.
Bookings and more information can be found on the booking website.
Farm tour at Honoliʻi Orchards. Image: Honoliʻi Orchards
Hilo Sharks Cacao Farm
(in Papaikou, 10 minutes north of Hilo): offers personal walking tours of their farm where they plant cacao seedlings and from which they harvest and process cacao pods every month. Learn how they grow, harvest and process the cacao into chocolate, and enjoy free samples of their chocolate products and Hawaiian-grown coffee.
The tour lasts about 3 hours and reservations are necessary. Costs are $75 for adults and kids 10+. Children of ages 3-9 are charged at $40. More information on their website.
Lavaloha Cacao Farm Tour (near Hilo)
(10 minutes west of Hilo) Lavaloha grows cacao on 24 acres of a working 1,000-acre farm outside Hilo. Their 1-hour tree-to-chocolate tour runs in small groups of 8 to 10 people via electric bus, covering the orchard, the processing area, and a tasting of seven chocolate varieties including the rare Criollo.
Lavaloha Tree-to-Chocolate Farm Tour
A 1-hour guided tour of Lavaloha's working cacao farm outside Hilo, covering the full tree-to-bar process from orchard to tasting lounge. From $33.
from:
$33
What is a suggested tour?Our suggested tours are hand-picked tours that receive consistent good reviews, give back to the community, and work hard to minimize their impact on the environment. Read more about these tours on our website.One stop in the orchard has the guide cracking open a cacao pod so you can taste the fresh pulp. It’s citrusy and tropical, nothing like finished chocolate, which surprises most visitors.
Tours at Lavaloha stop in the orchard to examine the pods up close. The farm grows three varieties, including the rare Criollo.
Ua Hānai Orchards (near Hilo
Now operating as Ua Hānai, this orchard is one of the older cacao farms on the Big Island with over 35 years of operation. Their 110 acre farm is home to 1,200+ cacao trees and is located just north of Hilo (2.5 miles) with views of Hilo Bay. At the farm tour you learn about cacao’s life cycle, harvest, fermentation, drying, and flavor creation. Tours end at their factory / shop in downtown Hilo where you can see the cacao processed into finished chocolate.
Tours run several days / week, more information on their booking page.
Hamakua Chocolate Farm (Papaikōu)
(8 minutes north of Hilo) The Hamakua Chocolate Farm is located in Papaikou- a small village just above Hilo on the tropical Hamakua coast.
During a 3 hour guided tour you get to see their farm, gardens and cacao processing facility, and enjoy a chocolate tasting experience. The tour includes tasting the fruit of the cacao pod, an explanation about cacao growing, harvesting, fermentation, and drying, and the entire chocolate making process from tree to finished chocolate bar.
Tours are $99/person, last 3 hours, and are organized twice a week. Bookings and more information on their booking website.
The 3 hour Hamakua Chocolate Farm tour takes you through their farm, gardens and cacao processing facilities. Image credit: the Hamakua Chocolate Farm.
Kulike Organic Cacao Farm (Hakalau)
(near Hakalau, 20 minutes north of Hilo): Offers 1.5-hour farm tours twice a week 1 pm. This is an off-grid, organic permaculture farm with approximately 400 cacao trees and many other tropical fruits grown in several permaculture styles including mixed and conventional orchard, food forest, and hugelculture. You can add on a visit to their beautiful waterfall and even collect eggs from their Korean Natural Farming chicken coop. At the farm tour you learn all about growing cacao organically – from regenerating the soil, life of the tree and harvesting, fermentation and drying, to processing into two-ingredient chocolate. In-season fruits from the farm are sampled with chocolate.
Tours will be personalized based on interest and are $40/pp – but a minimum of 2 bookings are needed for a tour. Note that they are off the beaten path, 10 minutes up a winding, narrow paved road with some areas of limited visibility. It is a scenic drive but you should be comfortable with pulling onto the grass as you drive uphill to let cars coming down the hill pass.
More information on their website.
Chocolate Tours in the Puna District
Puna runs southeast of Hilo along the lower East Rift Zone of Kīlauea. It shares the windward island’s wet, volcanic climate, which suits cacao well, but the farming community here is smaller and less developed than the Hilo/Hamakua corridor. Pāhoa is the main town and closest hub.
There’s currently one cacao tour operating in the district: Puna Gold Estate in Leilani Estates.
Puna Gold Estate
Located in Leilani Estates near the town of Pāhoa, the Puna Gold Estate farm organizes 1-hour tour of their 3-acre coffee & cacao estate, followed by a complementary chocolate tasting of their homegrown and made chocolate.
Tours are priced at $35/adult or $50 if you want to include a tasting. You can find out more about the farm tour and make your booking on the Puna Gold Estate website.
A visit to the on-grounds waterfall is included in the tour.
Chocolate and Cacao Farm Tours in Kona
South Kona is coffee country, and that shapes the chocolate tours here: several farms grow cacao alongside their coffee trees, using the natural canopy for shade. The leeward side is drier and sunnier than the windward coast, which produces different growing conditions and a different flavor profile in the finished chocolate.
Three farms now offer tours in this area, covering a range of price points and depth. Most grow cacao alongside coffee, which means some tours include both crops. If you’re based in Kona, this is the most convenient cluster on the island.
Original Hawaiian Chocolate Farm (Keauhou)
Bob Cooper and his wife run this small family operation on their working cacao plantation in Keauhou. The tour moves through the full bean-to-bar process in sequence: you walk the orchard, cut open a fresh pod to examine the seeds, then follow the beans through drying, roasting, and processing before watching the hand-molding in the on-site factory. Tasting covers three varieties: milk, dark, and criollo. The criollo is the one to pay attention to: it’s a rarer cacao type that produces a noticeably less bitter chocolate than the variety most commercial brands use.
Tours run Wednesdays and Fridays at 9am and 11am. Advance reservations are required, and directions to the farm are provided only after your booking is confirmed. The walking paths are shaded and include chairs at stops, so it’s manageable if mobility is a concern. The on-site shop is open Tuesday through Friday, 10am–3pm, if you want to buy chocolate without the tour.
Admission is $30 for adults (13+), $12 for children ages 6–12, and free for children 5 and under.
Original Hawaiian Chocolate Factory Tour
Hawaiʻi-grown criollo chocolate, tasted at the farm where it was made. Bob Cooper leads every tour himself through his working cacao plantation in Keauhou, South Kona.
from:
$30
What is a suggested tour?Our suggested tours are hand-picked tours that receive consistent good reviews, give back to the community, and work hard to minimize their impact on the environment. Read more about these tours on our website.Kuaiwi Farm
While better known for their Kona Coffee farm tours, they also grow cacao on their certified organic farm. You can join them for a chocolate candy making class, combined with a farm tour and tasting. Classes include unlimited chocolate tasting and a goodie bag. Reservations are mandatory at least three days in advance.
See their website for details.
Puna Chocolate (Kealakekua)
Puna Chocolate runs a roughly 2-hour walk that covers 200-plus yards of their Mamalahoa Highway property in Kealakekua, about 8 miles south of downtown Kona. You handle fresh pods, taste the pulp straight from the fruit, and follow the process through to a tasting of up to five samples: dark, milk, and white varieties as well as chocolates from different growing regions across Hawaiʻi. The terrain is uneven with inclines throughout, so it is not suitable for wheelchairs, walkers, or strollers.
Tours run Wednesday through Saturday at 9am, 12pm, and 3pm, which makes this the most schedule-flexible option in South Kona. Minimum group size is 4; private tours start at $500. Tickets run $40 per person.
Where can you buy Hawaiian Chocolate?
There are several producers on the Big Island that make chocolate from locally produced cacao and sell it. You can find this chocolate at local farmers markets, in any of the “Island Naturals” food stores, in most other convenience shops and even in the local boutiques in the island resorts.
You can also order it online and/or ship it home through the websites of many chocolate producers mentioned on this page, see for example the websites of Honokaʻa Chocolate Co, Hakalau Chocolate, or the Original Hawaiian Chocolate Farm.
A gecko tastes cacao beans on a cacao farm on Hawaii’s Big Island. Photo credits: Jay Jones / For the LA Times
Bonus: Vanilla Farm Tour and Tasting
Because chocolate and vanilla go so well together we’d like to point out that you can also take a tour of a local vanilla farm!
Vanilla is one of the more labor-intensive crops grown in Hawaiʻi. The beans are the fruits of an orchid that only blooms for one day only, during which each flower must be hand-pollinated within hours of opening. There is much more to learn about vanilla farming, and the Hawaiian Vanilla Co. organizes farm tours that can also include a lunch during which you can taste foods and drinks that include their vanilla.
Vanilla Experience Luncheon & Farm Tour
Experience a delicious vanilla inspired luncheon and walking tour through a Hawaiian vineyard with vanilla vines. Learn about the vanilla cultivation process and rich history while enjoying homemade vanilla offerings.
from:
$90
What is a suggested tour?Our suggested tours are hand-picked tours that receive consistent good reviews, give back to the community, and work hard to minimize their impact on the environment. Read more about these tours on our website.The Hawaiian Vanilla Co is located close to Honokaʻa on the northern Hamakua coast, you can find more vanilla farm tours on our BIG overview list of Big Island farm tours.