As a child growing up on the Hawaiian island of Oahu, Jaron Hanus, 36, a co-owner of the Japanese-inspired cafe Neko Koneko in Honolulu, drank milk with every meal at the insistence of his grandmother. To make it more enticing, she would buy the strawberry-flavored kind from a local Japanese grocery store or make her own by simmering fresh strawberries in milk and honey. Hanus’s wife and business partner, Erin Yonamine, 45, also grew up on Oahu and remembers her grandmother plying her with ichigo (the Japanese word for strawberry) milk and ichigo milk candies from Shirokiya, an erstwhile Japanese department store in Honolulu. When the couple opened Neko Koneko in 2021, they created their own version of their childhood drink — updated with oat milk but just as vibrantly pink.