L&L Hawaiian BBQ began as dairy in the early 1950s

Last month I wrote a little bit about L&L Drive-in and how it was named. Two men who were part of L&L’s early days emailed me to share their recollections.

L&L Hawaiian BBQ is owned today by Eddie Flores and Johnson Kam. They have about 200 locations in Hawaii, California, Washington, Nevada, Arizona, Colorado, Oregon, Utah, Texas, New York, Tennessee, Guam and Japan.

Flores and Kam are the fourth owners, I believe. Originally, L&L was a dairy, then a soda fountain and finally a drive-in restaurant.

Wilfred Ogawa, 86, of Kaneohe said he was pleasantly surprised to see that short piece about L&L Dairy and a photo of Robert Lee Sr. and his wife. He told me some things that filled in some of the gaps of my understanding of their early history.

L&L Dairy, I was told by the owner’s son, Bob Lee Jr., began around 1952. Wilfred Ogawa said he was quite familiar with its operations because he worked there in 1955-1956, producing both homogenized and pasteurized milk for retail consumption.

“The plant and retail store were located almost at the end of King Street, approaching Kapiolani Boulevard, and mauka of the Chevron station, just below the now H-1 freeway exit to Kapiolani.”

King Street has been expanded since then, and the offramp to the freeway was added in the 1960s. The L&L processing plant might have been in what are now lanes of traffic.

“On the Ewa side of the plant building was a lane that led to the back where several duplex apartments were located. Robert Lee Sr. owned them.

“The supervisor of the plant was a woman whose name I vaguely recall as Mrs. Williams. Other than her, another guy and I were the only ones processing milk.

“Every Sunday I’d drive a van to Waimanalo to pick up several 10-gallon cans of raw milk for the following week’s production,” Ogawa recalls.

The Waimanalo dairy was the only farm that provided the raw milk.

The dairy farm was privately owned and operated by a Portuguese family. I don’t recall their name.

“We started at 2 a.m., and I was in charge of ‘cooking’ the raw milk and running it through the process and bottling the end products.”

People could come in that morning to buy fresh cold milk.

“I opened the plant each morning, set up all the pipes and vat for processing and poured the raw milk into the vats for cooking. Two of us monitored the gauges to maintain correct temperatures and, once the cooking level was completed, started the bottling process.

“I would guess the processing area was about 1,000 square feet. We had a set number of homogenized and pasteurized milk targets each day and don’t recall having any shortage on orders.

“Back then milk was bottled with thick paper caps. To me the best milk was the pasteurized, which had about 3 to 4 inches pure butterfat at the top. I shook it well, and it was the best-tasting milk ever. Yes, the upper third of the bottle was thick with that golden sweet cream.”

Robert Lee Jr. told me 10 years ago that L&L sold its products at four milk depots. He could remember only Market City (about where the plant is) and Li­liha (where the drive-in is today).

Lee told me you could drive up and an employee would come out and take your order. He’d put it together and deliver it to your car.

Ogawa does not recall any milk depots.

“When you refer to ‘depots,’ L&L didn’t have a special place or area in which their milk was sold,” Ogawa says. “It was just milk sold along with other dairy products in the grocery stores. Now, all that may have changed after I left in the summer of ’56.

“L&L milk was sold at some other retail markets besides the one located at the plant, which was the only one Robert built. Milk was the only product produced and sold.

“I finally quit in late ’56 and left for the mainland to attend college. I was a Korean Army veteran, 25 years of age, and needed to find something better than working with milk.

“The photo of Robert in your article last month is probably much younger than when I first met him. He was a short, heavy-set guy back then.

“Years ago after returning from the mainland and settled with a family, I met Robert again at a mutual family friend’s wedding. I was having a successful career in the U.S. Customs Service at that time. He was gracious in congratulating me on my accomplishments.

“It was truly an experience working with Robert, his family. At 86 I’m probably the last link to its history. Thanks for bringing back fond memories.”

Rowland Ho also wrote me, with information on the Liliha location.

“Mr. Harold Sakuma was the original owner of L&L Drive-in located still in the area on Liliha Street,” Ho believes. “Mr. Sakuma (deceased about seven to eight years ago) was a neighbor of mine in Alewa Heights.

“This is the story he had told me many years ago while still living on Paina Street.

“Mr. Sakuma was a master carpenter by trade and worked for many years as a maintenance man at the Sheraton Hotel in Waikiki. He always wanted to own a hamburger joint and told me he had encouraged his brother-in-law (Robert Lee Sr.) to sell hamburgers along with milk products at his dairy on Liliha, which he declined to do.

“When a real estate opportunity arose, Mr. Sakuma built the L&L Drive-in building structure by himself and opened the first L&L Drive-in on Liliha Street. He named it after his brother-in-law and son.

“Since then I think the L&L Drive-in business has changed hands two or three times and is now owned by Eddie Flores, who has grown it into an nationwide empire.

“I remember as one of the neighborhood kids (fifth/sixth-graders), Mr. Sakuma would hire us to peel potatoes by hand at his house for his french fries at L&L Drive-in. Those were the days!

“So, if it wasn’t for Harold Sakuma, there would be no L&L Drive-in today.”

I appreciate these two glimpses into L&L’s early days. It still leaves me with gaps in my understanding. Readers, can you fill in some of them?

Bob Sigall, author of the “Companies We Keep” books, looks through his collection of old photos to tell stories of Hawaii people, places and companies. Email him at Sigall@yahoo.com.