Most of the places that opened in Kailua town in 2026 have the same owners as a place that was already there. Cinnamon's put a dessert shop beside its brunch room. Please Come Again Ice Cream opened a hot dog counter in the space next door. Rise & Grind took over the empty storefront beside its coffee bar. Hot Pot Heaven turned into a pho shop at the same address. Mānoa Chocolate added a coffee roaster inside the store it already runs.
Through the first week of October, very few of the year's openings came from an operator with no history in Kailua. Mostly, existing kitchens grew by one wall, one menu or one storefront.
Five Openings, Five Familiar Owners
Here are the 2026 openings, each listed with the business it grew out of.
| New spot | Address | Opened | Grew out of |
|---|---|---|---|
| Rise & Grind "diner" | Oneawa Street | March 28 | Rise & Grind Coffee Bar, next door |
| Cinnamon's Sweet Shop | 315 Uluniu St., Kailua Square | June 1 | Cinnamon's Restaurant, next door |
| Mānoa Chocolate café and roaster | 333 Uluniu St. | Reported July 29 | Mānoa Chocolate's own Kailua shop |
| Pho N Grindz | 201 Hamakua Drive | September 10 | Hot Pot Heaven Kailua, same space |
| Little Pickle | 320 Kuʻulei Road | October 3 | Please Come Again Ice Cream, next door |
Earlier in the year there were more openings by existing businesses that weren't Kailua-born. Pacific Business News reported in January that the locally owned Lotus Café had opened a 1,180-square-foot location at 141 Hekili St. Nomadic, which used to be Wicked HI, added a shop at 270 Kuulei Road and kept its Haleʻiwa food truck running. New Kamana Kitchen 3, the third location of an existing Indian restaurant, moved into the former Himalayan Kitchen space at Kailua Shopping Center, 600 Kailua Road.
How a Storefront Changes Hands Without Changing Owners
The details of each opening show how this keeps happening. In every case, a business already had customers and a lease on one side of a wall. When the space on the other side came open, the owners took it.
Rise & Grind is a good example. Leah Garwood started it in 2021 as a coffee trailer at the Kakaʻako farmers market. She opened the Oneawa Street storefront in 2023, in the space 22 Kailua left when it moved to 326 Kuulei Road. Then Aloha Sweet Remedies, a fresh-pressed juice shop, left the unit next door. Garwood told Aloha State Daily that she moved her kitchen into the new side and added seating. The menu went from pastries and bagel sandwiches to breakfast burritos, bowls, paninis and wraps. The trailer still runs Sundays at the Kailua farmers market at Castle Hospital.
Little Pickle almost didn't happen. Kyle Wai Lin said the space next to Please Come Again was supposed to be a bakery. The bakery plan fell through, and the unit stayed empty for a while before he and Josephine signed for it last December. The buildout and sourcing then took longer than planned. One of those tasks was finding a local baker who could make a hot dog bun without preservatives. The grand opening was this past Saturday, October 3.
Pho N Grindz didn't need a new space at all. In May, Jimmy and Kim Tran started serving pho at lunch at Hot Pot Heaven Kailua. Kim Tran said the restaurant got busier. Pho did well enough that they changed the whole concept. The new menu has Kim's favorite soups and Jimmy's favorite plate lunches, like garlic shrimp and shoyu chicken. The menu change was tested at lunch for months before the sign went up.
Mānoa Chocolate also grew inside its own walls. HONOLULU Magazine reported that the shop now pours coffee a few feet from where the beans are roasted. Owner Dylan Butterbaugh started the company in 2010 with a hand-cranked refiner at his family's home. He opened a Kailua store and factory two years later, and has since added a factory on Kapaʻa Quarry Road, a farm in Waialua and a shop in Waikīkī. The Kailua shop is still what the magazine calls the heart of the operation.
What the Expansions Cost at the Counter
Josephine Wai Lin explained why she and Kyle opened a savory spot:
"It's expensive to eat out in Kailua — you can't really grab and go for anything less than $30 — and we were like, 'What can we do?'"
Set against her $30 figure, the prices at these openings sit lower:
- Little Pickle: six specialty hot dogs at $12 each, including a Chicago dog, a nori dog and a "tropickle" dog with lilikoʻi mustard. House agua frescas are $5.
- Cinnamon's Sweet Shop: soft serve at $4.99 small or $6.99 large, and an espresso affogato for $5.99. Cookies run from $6.50 for chocolate chip to $8.99 for chocolate chip mac nut.
- Rise & Grind: a $13 "love child" bagel sandwich, a $15 breakfast bowl and $6 house pastries.
- Mānoa Chocolate café: $8 mochas, a $7 flat white and $10 single-origin pour-overs from Maui and Kona.
Several of these places also stretch their parent business into new hours. Cinnamon's Sweet Shop is open 7 a.m. to 2 p.m., the same hours as the restaurant next door. The Mānoa Chocolate café opens at 7 a.m. daily and closes at 4 p.m. Little Pickle starts with noon to 8 p.m., Wednesday through Sunday. Josephine said the goal is to open at 8 a.m. with breakfast sandwiches and add more days.
The Spaces That Went Dark
Kailua also lost some places this year. HONOLULU Magazine's 2026 closure tracker, last updated in July, lists Miyoshi Ramen in Kailua as closing in March. Mahaloha Burger and the Kailua Pieology both closed in May. The tracker doesn't give addresses or exact dates. As of early October, the reporting doesn't show who took over those spaces.
The vacancies that did get filled this year went to known owners: a juice shop's unit went to the coffee bar next door, a bakery that never opened made room for the ice cream shop's owners, and a hot pot room became a pho shop under the same family.
Kuʻulei Road Is About to Get Easier to Cross
Kuʻulei Road has picked up a lot of this activity. Nomadic is at 270, Little Pickle and Please Come Again are at 320, and 22 Kailua is at 326. The street is also getting city work soon. The City and County of Honolulu's Complete Streets page for Kailua says quick-build pedestrian refuge islands and curb extensions at Kuʻulei Road and Aulike Street should start going in this November. The same project sets a 20-mph school-zone limit. Longer-term designs for Kuʻulei Road, Kailua Road and Kalāheo Avenue are still being worked out. They include crossing beacons, bike lanes and traffic calming.
Kyle Wai Lin described Little Pickle as a spot to pick something up on the way home from the beach. Late beach runs now have a firm cutoff. On September 11, 2026, the city made Kailua Beach Park's closure hours permanent, so the park is closed every night from midnight to 4 a.m.
A Fall Loop Through the New Counters
Here's what's coming up in town this fall:
- Saturday, October 10, 4 to 5:30 p.m.: Sister Robi Sister plays a free set in the Kailua parking garage, according to the Kailua Town events calendar. Cinnamon's Sweet Shop and the Mānoa Chocolate café will be closed by then, so Little Pickle is open later than either one.
- October 23 to 31, 10 a.m. to 4 p.m. daily: Kailua Town runs a free, self-guided Halloween activity for families. Those hours overlap with the Mānoa Chocolate café and with Cinnamon's Sweet Shop until 2 p.m.
- Saturday, November 14, 4 to 5:30 p.m.: Kalaʻe & Kalena play the next free parking-garage show. That's also the month the city expects to start building the crossing islands at Kuʻulei and Aulike.
If you're working out how your own Kailua block is changing, or what a storefront turning over means for the street around it, Team Hawaii keeps track of these details. Let's Connect, and we'll share what we're seeing.
