The long-anticipated arrival of Big City Diner to Windward Mall could be about a month away.

“We are excited for them to open, that’s for sure,” said Kristin Smith, Windward Mall assistant marketing manager.

Construction “has been chugging along,” said Lane Muraoka, president and co-owner of Big City Diner Inc.

“The original plan was (to open) last summer; then we thought maybe June or July, before summer ends, and that didn’t happen,” he said.

The 5,411-square-foot space, formerly an IHOP restaurant, is being completely rebuilt, which has led to unexpected delays.

Restaurant opening dates are moving targets as it is.

“We’re looking forward to getting out there. It’s just a matter of when,” he said, adding that the end of September is his estimate for the Kaneohe location.

When it is ready to open, Big City Diner will simply open, with no fanfare, no grand-opening hoopla, he said.

“I don’t want to put more stress on employees.”

The restaurant business is not like selling shirts, he said. “You’re creating your products 10 feet away, from scratch, and serving hundreds of people a day.”

At first the restaurant will open just for breakfast and lunch, and when dinner service is added, it could be for “three or four nights” instead of all seven nights a week, to give employees time to get acclimated and to assure good customer experiences, he said.

The company is changing its point-of-sale system, which, as anyone who works in retail knows, goes way beyond just the cash register. All sorts of key data is funneled through a point-of-sale system at a restaurant for tracking of, say, the most popular dishes.

Talk of Big City Diner opening at Windward Mall has circulated since at least 2013, but it only really became official about a year ago when IHOP reached an early termination agreement with mall management and vacated the space.

Even IHOP, which opened in 2007, was delayed in getting into the mall by some three years.

Its grand opening in Kaneohe was attended by Julia Stewart, then chairwoman and CEO of IHOP Corp. (now known as DineEquity Inc.).

Stewart has perhaps the strongest handshake of any person, male or female, your columnist has ever met. It’s not a bone-crusher just to prove she can shake hands just as well as her male C-suite counterparts. It is, however, powerful enough to instantly command respect.

But enough digression.

Something Muraoka does that sets him apart from many, if not most, isle restaurateurs is staying highly active on Twitter, the social network.

Twitter was cited as part of the reason President Barack Obama won election in 2008, Muraoka said. His campaign “used this social platform … and reached millions of this demographic, the younger generation,” he said.

While he doesn’t view himself as computer-savvy, Muraoka said Twitter’s 140-character messaging enables quick engagement with customers and potential customers.

“It lets us develop relationships with people and nurture them,” he said.

Most of Muraoka’s @BCDlane timeline is comprised of pictures of the restaurant’s food and invitations to get to one of the five locations to enjoy it, but he keeps an eye out for any Twitter users who have a less than perfect experience and engages with them one on one.

He encourages all customers who have a concern to ask for the manager on duty but realizes not everyone is comfortable doing that.

“Maybe it’s a Hawaii thing,” he said.

Word of mouth doesn’t just travel from customer to family and friends and then evaporate into the air in this Internet age. Rather, it winds up online where even more people can get negative impressions.

On Twitter “they can come directly to me as one of the owners and tell me, ‘This was not right, and we wanted you to know because you’re a local company and we want to help you survive,’” he said. He encourages those sorts of conversations by direct message, a private and confidential process.

“Constructive criticism” can be helpful, he said. “We want to make sure people leave happy.”

Reach Erika Engle at 529-4303, erika@staradvertiser.com or on Twitter as @erikaengle.