Morning Brew: 31 Years of Local Coffee

The couple started with a cart and, all these years later, are launching their third location on O‘ahu.

Peter and Debbie Anderson, who began their lives together as Punahou School sweethearts, got the idea of opening a cafe when Debbie worked at one part time while studying interior design at UCLA. On Saturday mornings, Peter would come in for breakfast and coffee.

“We just really loved the vibe of the cafe lifestyle and the business model,” Peter says.

When they returned to O‘ahu, they opened their “Krakatoa Kaffe” coffee cart at Diamond Head Theatre, across from Kapi‘olani Community College. They would serve KCC students and, during DHT production intermissions, would sell coffee to theatergoers, giving $1 from every drink sold to the theater. However, it only lasted a few months, since “it was a lot of work, not a lot of money,” Debbie says.

They moved their cart to Hilton Hawaiian Village, but customers were sparse as nearby businesses did not open until later in the morning and the hotel launched its own coffee cart.

They decided they needed a permanent location all their own so they ditched the cart, picked up some furniture at a Salvation Army store and moved into an 800-square-foot brick-and-mortar at Kailua Shopping Center.

When they opened in March 1995, they had no employees and no sign outside to let people know what was going on inside. One early regular was a graphic artist who designed the couple’s original sun logo for $100 worth of coffee.

“We did everything ourselves” for the first six months, Debbie says. “We always worked open to close” from 6 in the morning to 8 at night.

When Starbucks opened across the street in the early 2000s, business dropped off, so they pivoted. “That’s when we really started to kind of expand our food menu,” Peter says. And despite the competition, they moved next door into a space twice as large later in the decade.

Coming up with the menu is the fun part of the business, Debbie says. While the cafe in Kailua and a second location opened by the couple in 2017 in Kaka‘ako’s SALT sell the same basics, some foods and specials differ. “Each cafe ends up creating their own personality that fits the community,” Debbie says.

“We spend more time with the customer one-on-one than most places,” Peter says. And those relationships make a lasting impact on customers and staff. One current manager recalls coming often to the cafe with her parents as a toddler.

Now the Andersons are opening a third location, on University Avenue near UH Mānoa, that will cater to students.

“We were (originally) nervous about signing a five-year lease, and here we are 31 years” later, Debbie says.