Our Story
At the heart of each treat is a sweet love story...
We're Lin and Chris ter Horst — the epicureans behind it all.
We are often asked how we ended up making candies in paradise. It’s a good question, seeing as our roots led us all over the world before we found our beloved home on Maui. Lin is Shanghai-born and raised in New York, and Chris is a native of the Netherlands. It was when our paths led us separately to Beijing that we found each other and fell in love over a shared passion for running.
After moving to Maui in 2012, we were quickly enamored by the island’s abundance of fruits. We encountered fruits constantly as we adjusted to island-life—wild guavas on mountain hikes, ripened lilikoi dropping in neighbors’ backyards, prickly pears on roadside cacti, apple bananas gifted to us by kind farmers… Perhaps the answer to why we started it all is simply that it was impossible for us to sit idle with all that fruit on our doorsteps!
That’s when the idea for Maui Fruit Jewels began to shine.
Lin—trained as a professional pastry chef at the Le Cordon Bleu in London—began developing recipes to make the island’s beloved flavors shine. She adapted pâte de fruits, a traditional French confection, to better showcase the bold flavors of Hawaii’s local fruits. Chris—an engineer and, at the time, a professional triathlete—had been training on Maui’s intense slopes and oceans. Inspired by Lin’s ideas, Chris quickly shifted his goals and channeled his hard-working spirit into creating what would become Maui Fruit Jewels.
We are proud to provide treats that are crafted according to our values, utilizing ingredients of the highest quality and only fruits that are sourced locally. Maui Fruit Jewels remains a family-run operation, inspired by Hawaii and its people. We are thrilled to offer you a taste of our island paradise, no matter where you are.
Aloha, Lin & Chris
As a family-owned business on Maui, we carefully oversee every stage of our production process: from sourcing the best fruits to placing each individually wrapped product into sturdy, beautiful boxes.
Gifts with Aloha
Find your Hawaiian omiyage: Embrace the Japanese tradition of gifting regional food specialties with brightly colored boxes of small Hawaiian treasures.
