We Heart Cake Co. has traded its longtime Kaimukī storefront for a bigger kitchen in McCully, and the Honolulu bakery is marking the move with a grand opening celebration on Saturday, August 8, from 11 a.m. to 1 p.m. The first 102 customers who show up will walk away with a free cake pop, while the shop’s new lineup includes fresh-baked lava puffs and a growing butter mochi line built on family history and imported flour.
The bakery closed its Kaimukī location, at 3468 Waialae Avenue, at the end of May after about six years there, according to Aloha State Daily. It soft-opened its new spot at 1481 S. King St. in mid-June before settling into its current hours: Monday through Saturday from 9 a.m. to 3 p.m., closed Sundays. Commercial property records show the shop leases Suite 103 inside the Kaheka Professional Center, a 1,322-square-foot ground-floor space, per Colliers International.
A Bigger Kitchen After a Year-Long Search
Owner Kanako Kiyabu spent more than a year looking for a new business space before landing on the King Street site, the station’s report notes. The move gives We Heart Cake Co. a much larger kitchen than its Kaimukī location, letting the business make more products while maintaining quality — a shift Kiyabu says was necessary to keep up with production demand.
The Kaheka Professional Center itself is a five-story, 71,778-square-foot commercial complex built in 1955 along Honolulu’s dense McCully/Kaheka corridor, according to LoopNet. For customers picking up orders, the shop offers dedicated front parking for up to 30 minutes, along with an attached surface lot accessible via Liona Street.
From a First Birthday Cake to a Retail and Wholesale Business
We Heart Cake Co.’s story goes back to Kiyabu baking her daughter’s first birthday cake. The business grew from there after friends and family began asking her to make cakes for their own special occasions, she has said. Kiyabu, who is originally from Tokyo, started crafting custom wedding cakes in Hawaii in 2012 before opening her first brick-and-mortar bakery in Downtown Honolulu in May 2015, according to PoohKo Hawaii. That shop later relocated to Kaimukī in August 2019 to expand from custom-order cakes into daily retail bakery items, as Onolicious Hawaiʻi reported at the time…