Donut Dynasty
Nienty-two years after Takezo Komoda started the family business, the last of Makawao's mom-n-pop stores is still winning customers, still making dough.
Shannon Wianecki
Photography by Cecilia Fernández | Jason Moore
Any Maui visitor who’s done his homework knows to visit T. Komoda Store & Bakery in Makawao. The bakery’s legendary cream puffs top everyone’s must-try list—tourists and kama‘¯aina alike. Before the store opens at 7 a.m., a line stretches alongside the weathered building; by 10 a.m. the baker’s racks inside are empty. Early birds have made off with tidy boxes brimming with the coveted cream puffs, irresistible stick donuts, chocolate-smeared long johns, fruit pies, and Chantilly cakes. Latecomers must content themselves with whatever is left—maybe just a tee shirt to prove they were there.
The crowds keep coming, despite head-on competition from Krispy Kreme, an internationally popular bakery chain that parked itself just outside Kahului Airport. How does little old family-run Komoda Store maintain its pull? Well, the owners might never spill the cream-puff recipe, but they do reveal how they’ve run a thriving business for ninety-two years and counting. It’s not a formula easily replicated.
Komoda's founders Shigeri and Takezo Komoda.
Takezo Komoda opened the family business in 1916, just after the birth of his son Takeo. Originally it was a restaurant, not a bakery, on the corner of Makawao Avenue and Olinda Road, where Polli’s Mexican Restaurant is today. Komoda and his wife, Shigeri, raised six boys and two girls there. Each took a turn selling sandwiches and saimin to paniolos (cowboys) and plantation workers. The family made their own bread and donuts from the bread dough—the precursor to today’s stick donuts. When the Marines moved into town during WWII, Shigeri sold them bread and guava jelly for five cents. “They came and ate saimin and stew in the back,” says Shigeri’s granddaughter, Betty Shibuya.
The business eventually moved across the street to its current Baldwin Avenue location and Takeo took over. But it wasn’t until 1947, when Takeo’s brother Ikuo returned from baking school, that the business found its true destiny as a bakery and general store. Ikuo came home from Minneapolis with pastry recipes in tow. He claims there’s nothing secret about them. “It’s the same thing as other bakeries,” he says. “Nothing different.”
