Founder Spotlight Ep5: Launching Holey Grail Donuts with Nile and Hana Dreiling

Nile and Hana Dreiling are co-founders of Holey Grail Donuts, the original taro donut launched 6 years ago in Hawaii and built with the local community in mind. They share their pilgrimage of launching a retail food company and advocating for taro during a natural disaster and the pandemic, and the lessons they learned along the way.

Matthew Lee: “Can you tell us more about taro as an ingredient?”

Hana Dreiling: “Taro is a super food similar to potato, but very high in antioxidants and very good for you as well…we use it as a starch which kind of creates a neutral based flavor which allows us to highlight the different weekly flavors on top.”

Matthew Lee: “Are there any advice for other founders that’s at your same stage?”

Nile Dreiling: “…authenticity and conviction. In order to have conviction you have to have authenticity in everything that we do and truly believing in what we are creating is absolutely critical for this type of business…and that’s what gets us through the valleys.”