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Honolulu Coffee: From a Downtown “Café Vienna” to USA Today’s No. 1 Coffee Subscription

By Oahu Local Published 5 min read

Green bags of Honolulu Coffee 100% Kona and Kona Blend coffee with shipping boxes among tropical leaves.
Honolulu Coffee’s Kona coffee bags and subscription boxes. Photo: Courtesy of Honolulu Coffee Co. (via USA Today 10Best)

When USA Today’s 10Best results posted on Oct. 28, Drip Studio HNL took No. 2 among the nation’s independent coffee shops (our profile here). Another Honolulu name went one better on a different list. Readers voting in the 2026 USA Today 10Best Readers’ Choice Awards named Honolulu Coffee the No. 1 Best Coffee Subscription. The company announced the win on Oct. 28.

It’s a step up from 2025, when the company says it placed No. 2 in the same category. It’s also the latest chapter for a brand most locals know from hotel lobbies, mall counters and, lately, a croissant line on King Street.

It started as Café Vienna

Like a lot of Honolulu institutions, Honolulu Coffee began small. The company says it was founded in 1992 with “one small kiosk in downtown Honolulu.” Its homepage also uses 1991 when describing its farm story. Honolulu Magazine’s 2014 history, by Martha Cheng, dates the first shop to 1991. That year Ray Suiter, with help from his father, Ray Suiter Sr., opened it in the Dillingham Transportation Building downtown.

It wasn’t called Honolulu Coffee at first. It was Café Vienna, inspired by the European café culture Ray Sr. and his wife, Jeanne, discovered while traveling in Europe as missionaries, Cheng wrote. The family later renamed it Honolulu Coffee Co. Jeanne told the magazine they’d realized people in Hawaiʻi, and tourists, didn’t want to drink Viennese coffee.

The business grew into a string of coffee bars. By 2008, Ray Jr. was ready to step back from retail and focus on roasting. He sold the company and started a roasting business of his own, according to Honolulu Magazine.

A new owner bets on “farm to cup”

The buyer was Ed Schultz, a former New York investment banker originally from western Massachusetts. He had already built the LatteLand café chain in Kansas City, the Honolulu Advertiser reported in 2010. The deal closed in February 2008.

Schultz told the Advertiser he “fell in love with the concept of being able to market the origin of coffee.” Hawaiʻi, he later told Honolulu Magazine, was the only place a coffee company could be part of the industry “from farm to cup.”

By 2010, the Advertiser counted 83 employees at seven coffee bars: in Waikīkī hotels, at Ala Moana Center, downtown, on Maui and on Guam. The company roasted all its coffee in a 1,600-square-foot facility on the upper level of Ala Moana Center, 90,000 pounds the year before. One locals’ perk from that era: every Friday, 100% Kona peaberry for the price of a regular cup.

Buying the farm, literally

The “farm to cup” idea got real when the company bought land in Kona. The farm sits on Kealakekua Ridge on the western slope of Mauna Loa, according to the Hawaiʻi Land Trust. Reported sizes have changed over time. In late 2014, Honolulu Magazine wrote about a newly purchased 30-acre farm used as a lab for everything from pruning to drying. At the 2015 opening of the company’s Waikīkī flagship, Schultz described a 75-acre farm. Today the Hawaiʻi Land Trust lists 225 acres, protected under conservation easements in two steps: 75 acres in 2016 and 150 acres in 2017. HILT notes the land also has native ʻōhiʻa forest, where ʻapapane and ʻio, the Hawaiian hawk, are known to nest.

The farm team keeps earning recognition. The company says its farm operations manager, Ryson Nakamasu, also serves as president of the Hawaiʻi Coffee Association. In 2025, its farm and roasting teams earned a Top 10 award in the Creative Division of the association’s cupping competition for a naturally processed Typica.

The Experience Center era (2015–2024)

For nearly a decade, the company’s showpiece stood at the corner of Kalākaua Avenue and Kapiʻolani Boulevard. The Honolulu Coffee Experience Center opened Oct. 1, 2015, at 1800 Kalākaua Ave. That’s the former Hard Rock Café site, and before that Coco’s and the famous Kau-Kau Korner, as Honolulu Magazine’s Don Wallace noted at the opening. The 9,000-square-foot space was part café and part coffee museum. The centerpiece was a cast-iron 1944 Probat roaster you could watch at work.

The Experience Center closed on Oct. 13, 2024, when its lease ended, KITV reported. Co-owner and president Tyler Zimmer promised the next chapter was “just down the street.”

Bakery on King: the new flagship

That next chapter is Bakery on King, which opened July 21, 2025, at 2643 S. King St. in Mōʻiliʻili, near UH Mānoa. Pacific Business News reported the site is the former Kokua Market space. The company says the location is its central bakery and kitchen, supplying pastries to all its Hawaiʻi cafés. Some items are sold only there.

According to the company’s opening announcement, the exclusive croissant lineup includes Kimchi Spam, Redondo hot dog, milk cereal, chocolate brownie, ube chantilly and lilikoʻi. The kitchen serves a loco moco and an omurice topped with a coffee demi-glace, along with avocado toast on house sourdough and pancakes with coffee-infused maple syrup. Culinary director Brian Sung, a Le Cordon Bleu graduate, leads the bakery program. Look for the Boz Schurr mural outside; the company says it marks the turn onto Kahuna Lane for the parking lot.

Visiting tips (per the company’s August 2025 post; check current hours before you go): open daily 6 a.m. to 4 p.m.; kitchen last call at 2 p.m.; outdoor seating; on-site parking free for the first hour with the café’s QR code, plus street parking.

Bigger than Oʻahu

Honolulu Coffee now reaches well beyond its downtown roots. The company’s 2025 year-in-review describes:

  • Franchise cafés in Japan, including Harajuku (2024) plus Ginza and Azabujuban (both opened May 1, 2025)
  • A first permanent mainland café, inside Emory University’s Cox Hall Market in Atlanta (July 2025)
  • A Best Local Coffee Roaster win in Honolulu Magazine’s Best of Honolulu awards (2025)

The subscription that won

Here’s the program readers voted No. 1. Per USA Today 10Best and the company: subscribers save 10% off list price, get free shipping on orders of $50 or more, earn rewards on consecutive orders, and can skip, swap or cancel anytime. Subscriptions can be managed by text. The October launch promo (25% off) ended Nov. 2. Whether you subscribe or stop by for a lilikoʻi croissant, the national nod is a fair reason to taste what a 1990s downtown coffee bar has become.

Sources

Filed under Honolulu

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