01 Brief
the situation
Maui Brewing Co. came to us through a referral, and the relationship has only grown since. We built the brewery’s site from the ground up, earned the restaurant group’s business soon after, and today we’re the Honolulu-based team behind all four MBC properties — the brewery, the restaurant group, Kupu Spirits, and Maui Hard Seltzer. We’ve been building for Hawaii businesses since 2010, and this is the kind of long partnership that comes from knowing the market you’re building for.
02 Discovery
what we found
A Hawaii brewery this size doesn’t need a brochure site — it needs one that does real work for two very different customers. The visitor on Ka‘anapali Beach wants to know what’s on tap and who’s playing tonight. The mainland fan wants to know which store actually has MBC beer on the shelf, 2,500 miles away. Serving both at once — island hospitality and a 26-state export brand — is not a problem a stock template was built to solve.
03 Design
the design approach
Fiercely local, like the brand itself. The build carries MBC’s unmistakable Maui identity across every property while keeping guests one tap from what they came for — what’s on tap, where to buy it, and what’s happening at their location tonight.
04 Build
how it was built
We built it on WordPress and put custom functionality at the center — the parts a template can’t deliver:
- Beer Finder — pulls live data from the distributor’s API so customers can find MBC beer near them, filterable by distance.
- Discover Our Beers — a custom post type powering the brewery’s own beer catalog, fully managed in-house.
- Live-music event system — a custom post type with per-location event buckets. Each location page shows only its own upcoming events; past events auto-expire off the list. Handles ~150 events a month across four locations.
- “Open Now” status — custom functionality that calculates each location’s open/closed state in real time against Maui time.
05 Launch / Ongoing
the relationship
Nine years and counting. One referral in 2017 became the brewery build, then the restaurant group in 2021, and today we maintain all four MBC web properties. The kind of relationship that only comes from doing the work right, year after year — for a Hawaii brand, by a Hawaii team.
06 Outcome
the result
