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The venerable Waioli Tea Room in Manoa, at one time renowned for its afternoon tea service, which attracted hundreds of guests daily, has returned to its original mission as a vocational training facility under the husband-and-wife tandem of Ross and Stefanie Anderson, who have operated a restaurant and bakeshop there since 2019.
The Andersons, who are leasing the property from the Salvation Army for their Waioli Kitchen & Bakeshop, hosted a centennial celebration for the tearoom Friday.
“We opened up a couple months before COVID-19 hit, for goodness’ sake,” said Ross Anderson, who has experience as a manager in the restaurant industry. “Without the community coming in and saying, ‘We’re still here,’ we never could’ve done it.”
Despite an illustrious history dating back to 1922, the tearoom had been closed for four years before the Andersons decided to open their bakeshop, prioritizing job training for graduates of substance abuse treatment programs and those recently released from incarceration.
“We decided to do it and make it our mission to take men and women from prison who normally wouldn’t be able to get jobs and just give them a second chance at life,” said Stefanie Anderson, a Christian pastor.
About 100 people have come through the restaurant as employees. While not everyone has been a good fit for the restaurant trade, there have been clear success stories, she said.
Waioli Kitchen & Bakeshop’s first employee, Tiffany Saleimoa, was working at Tamura’s Tavern in 2018 before she joined the bakeshop and eventually became one of its cooks. Prior to that she was incarcerated at the Women’s Community Correctional Center, where Stefanie Anderson used to volunteer as a counselor.
Saleimoa, 41, said she had no previous work experience as a cook.
“I came here only knowing fried eggs and scrambled eggs,” she said. “Ross ended up training me.”
When it first opened, the Waioli Tea Room was conceived as a vocational training facility for orphans from the Salvation Army Girls Home in Manoa, who were given the opportunity to learn cooking, cleaning, food service and hospitality skills in preparation for the work world once they had aged out of the program.
The orphanage closed in the early 1970s as the state developed foster care programs, and over the next 40 years the tearoom building had many operators “but never recaptured the sense of purpose that was its foundation for the first 50 years,” according to a news release.
The bakeshop’s menu is limited, but it does offer such dishes as banana mac nut pancakes and shortrib loco moco for breakfast, salads and cheeseburgers for lunch, and bakery goodies.
Stefanie Anderson said the current staff of about 20 employees operates as a close-knit crew. At the end of Friday’s ceremony, she thanked each one as they left for the day. One of the employees responded, “I do it for you guys.”
Although they do sometimes get advice from other professional chefs, the Andersons for the most part figure out on their own how to improve their menus. It’s one of the challenges of running a restaurant whose primary mission is to provide vocational training for those in underserved communities.
They view Waioli Kitchen & Bakeshop as a means to that end. “We use the food to keep the mission going,” Anderson said.
That’s on top of the challenges other restaurants are facing in Hawaii, a notoriously difficult environment for small businesses that are still recovering from the COVID-19 pandemic while dealing with inflation and the high cost of labor.
The bakeshop has survived in part because of community support and some leeway with lease payments on the part of the Salvation Army during the pandemic. But the couple offered another explanation for why they have made it thus far.
“We didn’t take any loans. … We got one grant for $20,000 during that time, and that’s why we say it’s God,” Anderson said. “I think in some ways he’s like, ‘You’ll have a story to tell. Your rent was paid, your mortgage was paid. You didn’t make any money … but you made it through.’”
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Waioli Kitchen & Bakeshop
>> Where: 2950 Manoa Road
>> Hours: 8 a.m. to 1 p.m. Wednesday through Sunday
>> Contact: Call 808-744-1619 or visit waiolikitchen.com.
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