As Auckland’s Four Shells Kava Lounge celebrates its fifth birthday, old and new misconceptions persist.

This story was supposed to be about a birthday, a couple’s small business connecting the Pacific diaspora with curious New Zealanders, and a drink fueled by 3,000 years of Pacific culture and cultivation. Instead, shortly before the interview with the owners of Four Shells Kava Lounge, its online store was unexpectedly shut down by its marketplace provider Shopify for selling kava products.

When co-owner Todd Henry reached out to the company about the decision, Shopify responded that it “understands the inconvenience” but that the closure “did not reflect the legality of the product, but the position of our banking partners.” Four Shells is not the only Shopify-based kava seller to have had their online store has been removed.

Shopify said it works with these partners, in this case Apple Pay, which did not respond to a request for comment from The Spinoff, to “ensure that products comply with the Shopify Payments Terms of Service.” In these cases, Shopify said the issue stems from restrictions placed by partners on the product categories supported by Shopify Payment. “In addition, the types of businesses listed on Shopify Payments Terms of Service “The website is representative but not exhaustive,” we read in response.

Four Shells’ online store accounts for only a small portion of the company’s total revenue, with its brick-and-mortar store in Victoria Park Market still operating. E-commerce can be elusive for some retailers (only in New Zealand, $1.39 billion was spent on online products (Q1 2024), but it’s not the economic losses that Henry is concerned about: By removing kava products from Shopify platforms, he fears that misconceptions about the drink will only continue to grow. Four Shells has maintained an email correspondence with Shopify and Apple since removing its online store, with no clear reopening date or plan in place.

Henry suspects the strongest connection between Shopify’s terms of service and kava is the mention of kratom. In Section B, under “products or services otherwise prohibited by law or our financial partners,” the terms of service list “substances designed to mimic illegal drugs,” specifying Kratom.

Kratom is an herbal leaf native to Southeast Asia that has roots in traditional medicinebut nowadays it is more commonly known as mood enhancer Or “gas station heroin”, often mixed with coffee cocktails in the usa. This US Food and Drug Administration does not regulate kratom as a controlled substance, which contributed to or caused 4,100 deaths in 44 US states in 2020–2022. Tampa Bay Times A three-part investigation found that kratom has been implicated in 580 deaths in Florida alone since 2013, and the substance is now widely used nationwide repression in the USA.

Kratom is not legalized in New Zealand, but in the US the substance is only banned in six states just as some citiesone sec Florida is the unofficial capital of coffee USA. Last year Bloomberg reported that the number of kava bars in the U.S. has increased from 30 to 400 since 2012, with only a handful of bars selling exclusively kava. The rest sell kava mixed with kratom.

In the US, you don’t even have to go to a specialty bar to buy a kava-kratom mixed drink: you can find it in cans in supermarkets and gas stations. In 2021, the kava-kratom RTD mixed drink Feel free It was introduced to the market and was sold as a mood enhancer, but its use in combination with kratom was found to have has caused addiction, abuse and dependency in some drinkersReddit’s 2.5k community r/QuittingFeelFree Every day there are posts from people documenting their attempts to overcome Feel Free addiction.

There are many American varieties of kava, which Henry has a problem with, because kava itself is consumed not for the taste but for the community it brings. Henry says he’s only been to one kava bar in the US, where the drink was flavored with mango and pineapple to soften the blow, but he says these attempts to make kava more palatable to the masses (in other words, more profitable) are taking away from the cultural context of the drink. “You can try it, but it’s not authentic, is it?”

“My biggest problem with this is the association people make between kava and something else. People in the United States always talk about kava and kratom in the same sentence,” Henry says. “Here in the Pacific, kava is unique in that it doesn’t need anything else, but if you want to get people addicted, kratom is addictive.”

He notes that the Pacific has very few exports, and kava is one of the region’s largest products. There is an opportunity here for the Pacific to have its native food and customs on the world stage, but the threat of foreign greed has caused some We call on Pacific leaders to speak out on U.S. exports. Henry hopes that one day kava will continue to be seen as an opportunity for bonding rather than a scare drug.

If you’ve never tried kava before, the first thing people will tell you about it is its taste. It’s bitterly earthy (like a very strong cup of herbal tea), and having to drink it in one gulp, as tradition has it, is initially a bit of a shock to the system. Then there are the side effects, mythologized by misconceptions and oral history as similar to those experienced after taking xanax Or drinking alcohol. It’s more of a mild relaxant, and as Henry said, “half food, half community.”

“If we’re just talking about kava as a drink, that’s only half of what kava is,” Henry says, “the other half is the community it facilitates.” Customers often tell him they’re just grateful to have a place where they can find meaningful connection.

It’s a drink that is popular with people like John Campbell AND Chloe Swarbrickand Four Shells’ clientele includes artists, academics who buy takeaway coffee on their way home, tourists looking to experience Polynesian culture and the Pacific diaspora seeking connection. Henry describes their salon as “pan-Pacific,” not representing any particular Pacific country, as many have a unique relationship with kava. In Vanuatu, fresh green kava is served, and in Fiji, kava is consumed throughout the day, while the Tongan tradition favors its consumption at night. Research has also shown that The Maori may have brought kava with them upon arrival in Aotearoa, but because the country’s cooler climate did not allow for cultivation, kawakawa was used as an alternative.

Henry may not be the man you expect to see behind the counter at Four Shells. Spotted and palangi, he is Tongan by marriage—a Pennsylvania native who met his wife, ‘Anau, while working in New Zealand; the two married in Tonga in 2010, beginning a long history of kava farming in the family. “The family (‘Anau) have always been into kava… in Tonga, they grew kava and had a masher that they would turn on early in the morning and mash kava all day long. That’s what kept the ‘Anau family fed,” he says.

Kava became an easy way to meet his new family. “I started drinking because I wanted to learn to speak Tongan and learn about the culture,” Henry says. “I thought, ‘Maybe they won’t like this palangi guy around, but once you get the effects of kava, no one will be mean to you.’ I found out (after) marrying a Tongan guy, they just treat you like a Tongan.”

Henry often hears that he should set up shop in Auckland risky lane Karangahape Road (a suggestion that made him laugh, because can you imagine dealing with all those drunks?), but this part of Victoria Park was his and ‘Anau’s final bet before abandoning their kava lounge dream. The pair tried 10 different locations before landing here, as the prospective owners quickly closed their doors after discovering they planned to start a kava business.

“The hardest part of starting (Four Shells) was finding a landlord who would rent us a space for kava,” Henry says. “It was like, ‘What do you want to do here?’ Well, we want to have a kava lounge.” He says he’s had to deal with “condescending” landlords who “just ignored us, and there were a couple of times people told us, ‘This is a stupid idea, it won’t work, we don’t want drunk Samoans’… It’s deeply connected to racism, people look at kava and think, ‘Brown people drink this, we don’t want them here.’”

Kava’s tarnished reputation now suffers from its association with kratom, which further fuels this type of racism, Henry says. There’s no food as misunderstood as kava, and he says Shopify’s decision to remove Four Shell’s store undermines centuries of cultural tradition in favor of misconception. The online store remains closed, and Henry will now apply to use a new payment provider other than Apple Pay to regain access. It seemed like letting the issue go would be more damaging than not challenging it, lest they set an example for other kava companies to be passed over by big corporations, he says. “It feels like this could be the tip of the iceberg for kava.”