Tale of 3 Maui Small Businesses: How They Survived in Kihei

From a little wooden booth with Kihei Road just feet away, Kyle Hendrickson watched a lifetime experience unfold right before his eyes. Every day, for the past year or so.

The owner-operator of Peace Love Shave Ice in the flea market-like structure known as Kihei Market Place counts his blessings that his little business survived to see the recent uptick in activity.

For the longest time, he was the only business operating in the tall, rather unusual multi-business structure.

“I was the only one open. I was the only one around, man. It was a ghost town,” Hendrickson said on Friday while serving visiting customers consistently. “(Now) I’ve talked to people who haven’t been out of their apartment for 4 months.

“I just feel very, very blessed to still be open,” he continued, “because I really don’t know how we survived, financially.”

The story of why you can still get tasty treats from Peace Love Shave Ice is unusual because Hendrickson never closed. In fact, he just opened at the beginning of 2020, a sister location to the shave ice booth operated by his mother, Allison, in a small booth in the Azeka Shopping Center parking lot to the north.

After running the Azeca booth for over 6 years, Allison sought help, and after a little while her son agreed to move to Maui and open the new location.

The timing, well, was quite the challenge. Yet, he persevered ~ and now has plenty of customers asking about the 27 shave ice flavors there, its special ice cream sandwiches, or why he has the "best ice on the island." 

There are many other success stories from Maui small businesses, if you just talk with them.

The Gamble

Almost on a whim, Jules Hurst and Fo Matin opened a little portable booth facing the main drag in Kihei Market Place, and called it Coconut Connection ~ opposite Hendrickson’s permanent booth to the south. The couple had never run a service business like it before, but pressed forward nonetheless.

“We just started fresh in mid-December,” Hurst said, “and we were wide-eyed.” What began as a fresh cold coconuts-only business soon morphed into a place where visitors can get fresh smoothies, hand-dipped chocolate bananas, and other treats ~ plus watch the coconut-slicing expertise of Matin in action.

“This is the Gatorade of the islands,” Matin will say while handing a ripe coconut with a hole cut at top to a visitor, nudging him to taste the milk. “Full of electrolytes.”

Hurst agrees with Hendrickson that the turning point seems to have arrived near the end of January.

“January was tough a little bit,” she said while tending to the business’s white parrot mascot, Poki. “But February and March have been really good.”

The Resurrection

While one new business was birthing, not far away a longtime small business was busy re-birthing. Lava Java is located in a small stand-alone building adjacent to Kihei Market Place’s sister structure, Kihei Kalama Village, with a driveway between the coffee shop and the ever-popular Ohana restaurant and other Triangle eateries.

Scott Patterson quietly re-opened the shop’s doors in November ~ to little fanfare and even fewer customers. His parents partnered to open the shop about 13 years ago, at the stupendous location.

However by early March last year, his father had to make the difficult decision to close shop at the start of the pandemic response. Scott, his father, and the shop's "team" of employees took advantage by working diligently to refurbish and remodel inside.

During the process, Patterson’s father decided to retire and move to the mainland, and pass down the Lava Java business to his young surfer son who was born on-island.

It seems to have worked out, the results evident Saturday, when the mid-morning line reached outside a side door.

“Last month was our best month in 13 years,” Patterson said with a smile while at a newly installed interior sitting table.

A new shiny countertop, nice chalk menus hand-designed by dedicated barista Meagan Wynn, and clearance of a lot of racks inside made the place look a lot different than it did in mid-November when Patterson unlocked the front door for business.

Then, he called the inside look that of a “thrift store,” with his father’s penchant for selling collectibles and other nicknacks along with coffee. Not that there was anything wrong with that ~ many are still available, only on shelving to the sides ~ but Patterson wanted a place where people could sit, stay, and socialize.

“I’m extremely grateful, and humbled by the whole thing,” he says, even though it's a 7-days-a-week commitment, to staff the counter, hand-bag custom coffee for sale, fulfilling mail orders, and re-stocking those shelves. “Being here and helping people, it’s way more rewarding.”

Patterson echoed the thoughts of Hendrickson and Hurst not far away, that although the island was “opened” for visitors in mid-October, it took some time for people to learn that travel restrictions were eased, and that it was once again safe to visit Maui.

“This holiday season was crazy-busy, like December 20 to January first,” Patterson said. “Then it just died after the first. The first 3 weeks of January were very discouraging.”

Then the last week of that month, people started coming through the doors of the place he and his patient team re-built by hand. “February was just bonkers, March the same.”

Back at Peace Love Shave Ice, Hendrickson pondered the impact of the pandemic response, not just for businesses but for people overall. On a daily basis he talks with people from not only around the nation but from all over the globe. All of them seemed eager to chat.

“It’s definitely changed,” he said, waving a hand to indicate the nearby Kihei Road and the huge Kalama Park behind it. “There’s a lot more people, a lot more foot traffic, a lot more cars passing by.

“People are hungry for socialization. People have to get back to normal. It’s like night and day.”

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IF YOU GO

These 3 small businesses are located in what locals call Triangle, or the strip of food, drink and shopping establishments from Hendrickson’s booth in the south, up to about Foodland. It’s all can’t-miss, because they are straight across the street from the expansive greenery of Kalama Park.

But in case you get lost:

Peace Love Shave Ice, Kihei Market Place, 1975 S. Kihei Rd. Follow both Kihei locations on Facebook via https://www.facebook.com/peaceloveshaveice/

Coconut Connection, also at 1975 S. Kihei Rd., on the front-north corner. Follow Poki the cockatoo on Instagram at https://www.instagram.com/pokimaui/

Lava Java is at 1941-A S. Kihei Rd. Visit lavajavamaui.com, or call (808) 879-1919.

Please support your #MauiSmallBusinesses. If you have a business story that needs to be told ~ or any human interest story for that matter ~ please contact Maui Insight. Our motto is Have Notebook, Will Travel.