Tiare Nakayama is one of those people who always baked for family occasions, and "a lot of family members were like, ‘You should sell your things,’" she said.
That was the origin of No Ka Oi Cookie Co. LLC.
A couple of years ago her grandmother, Bessie Young, now 93, encouraged her to be a vendor at a craft fair.
"So I started from there, doing craft fairs during the winter," but come January, since she would be waiting for holiday craft fairs to come around again, she started thinking of ways to expand the business.
Two words: farmers markets.
"So I started doing the Hawaii Kai Farmers Market at Kaiser High School last summer," she said. "Ever since then we’ve just been kind of going wherever."
WHERE ARE THEY
No Ka Oi Cookie Co. will be selling its cookies at the following locations:
>> KCC Farmers Market, 4 to 7 p.m. Tuesdays
>> Honolulu Farmers Market, Blaisdell Center, 4 to 7 p.m., second and fourth Wednesdays of each month
>> Eat the Street events
>> Honolulu Night Market, 683 Auahi St., 6 to 11 p.m. May 18
ON THE NET:
» www.nokaoicookiecompany.com
» www.streetgrindz.com
» www.honolulunightmarket.com/2013
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"Eat the Street (a monthly lunch truck event in Kakaako) was the next step," Nakayama said.
"People hear about it from other people," and just like that, a brand builds based on word-of-mouth marketing.
She added Honolulu Night Market to her sweet rounds.
Sweet is not always the key ingredient, however, such as last month’s bacon-themed Eat the Street event in Kakaako. She made bacon maple cookies and caramel bacon chocolate brownies.
"I’m always trying to come up with new, cool things for the farmers market (too)," she said. "I try to bring one new item each week to excite people."
Her next Eat the Street challenge will be to incorporate garlic, as that is the theme for the May 31 street food event.
Her website, which she acknowledges needs updating, highlights her staple cookie flavors, including Hawaiian Chocolate Mac Nut, Chocolate Chip Lovers, Chewy Oatmeal Raisin, Buttery Cornflake and Gooey Peanut Butter, but "not everything is on the website," she said.
While the cookies are her best-sellers, she’s known at the farmers markets for her scones, banana breads, dessert bars, cupcakes and, on the savory side, lavosh.
In addition to traditional flavors such as poppy seed and sesame seed, she invented a furikake lavosh, and has done a garlic-sea salt-cracked pepper version. She also created a li hing lavosh.
"Everything’s handmade," so the pieces are hand-rolled and are "artisanal" in appearance, resulting in "weird shapes." They are not neatly rectangular like the machine-produced types found in the grocery store.
Nakayama has also done customized "cookie medals."
Her favorite thing about baking is the happiness of the people who eat what she makes. "I enjoy doing it. To see them happy makes me happy," she said.
She grew up around the food business, as her grandparents ran a snack bar at the old Pay-N-Save store in Dillingham Plaza when she was growing up.
"That was our hangout. … It’s been in my blood," she said.
Her grandmother still accompanies Nakayama at times to help staff her table at craft fairs.
Her parents are Chinese, and her Japanese surname is from her husband.
She spent six years with her Air Force husband stationed in Nebraska where winters are largely spent cooped up indoors. That gave her time to hone her baking skills, which she now unleashes in commercial kitchen space she rents in Kalihi.
Her husband switched from the active-duty Air Force to the Hawaii Air National Guard so they could "move back home and be home for good," she said. "Hopefully we can stay here forever."
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“Buy Local” runs on Aloha Fridays. Reach Erika Engle at 529-4303, erika@staradvertiser.com or on Twitter as @erikaengle.
