How Mānoa Chocolate Went From a Tricycle-Powered Hobby to Kailua’s Tree-to-Bar Chocolate Factory

On Uluniu Street in Kailua, the free chocolate samples are half the fun. Mānoa Chocolate has been making bean-to-bar chocolate in Kailua since 2012. Its founder’s stated goal is bigger than any candy bar: a Hawaiʻi cacao industry with thousands of acres of orchards.

Here’s the story, pieced together from the company’s own site and published coverage.

A lab habit at UH

Dylan Butterbaugh didn’t like chocolate before he started making it, according to a 2023 University of Hawaiʻi News profile. He graduated from UH Mānoa in 2011 with a degree in Spanish and interdisciplinary studies. But he spent a lot of his time in a College of Tropical Agriculture and Human Resources lab, helping a friend, Dan O’Doherty, who was studying cacao as a crop for Hawaiʻi. There, with the support of Emeritus Professor Harry “Skip” Bittenbender, he cracked pods, ran tiny fermentations and made his first chocolate from tree to finished bar.

HONOLULU Magazine’s dining editor Mari Taketa wrote in October that Butterbaugh left UH wondering how he could make a living growing trees. Cacao trees take money, land and years, so in 2010 he bought local dried cacao seeds and started making chocolate in his parents’ kitchen. The early tools are part of the legend. A 2019 HONOLULU Magazine story mentions a Dora the Explorer tricycle rigged to winnow cacao shells. The magazine’s 2012 opening write-up describes a child-sized stationary bike that crushed beans into nibs, a technique he helped develop in the UH lab.

Kailua, step by step

• 2012: Mānoa Chocolate opened its first factory and shop in a second-floor space at 315 Uluniu St. in Kailua. The 2012 grand opening had pūpū, hourly tastings and tours, HONOLULU Magazine reported. Back then, bars sold for $8 to $10.
• 2019: A new factory and shop opened just down the street at 333 Uluniu St., with Italian-made equipment, a drink lab with a cacao-pulp spritzer, and gelato, per HONOLULU Magazine.
• December 2022: The Mānoa Chocolate Wine Bar opened to the public at the Kailua shop, according to the company. It says it started working on the idea in 2021.
• Since then: The company added a larger dedicated factory on Kapaʻa Quarry Road. UH News (2023) and HONOLULU Magazine (July 2026) both describe it. The 333 Uluniu St. shop is still what the magazine calls the heart of the operation: shop, café, coffee roaster and wine tasting.
• 2026: The company added Mānoa Café, a coffee roaster and café, at the Kailua shop. HONOLULU Magazine covered the opening in July.

The company now also has a Waikīkī store on Lewers Street and a shop it shares with Mana Up and Kō Hana Rum at the Royal Hawaiian Center, according to its contact page.

What makes it different: growing the cacao, too

Plenty of chocolate shops sell bars. What sets Mānoa Chocolate apart is the push to grow and process the cacao here. The company says it buys beans directly from farmers and makes everything in-house, from roasting, winnowing and grinding to tempering and molding.

Its cacao page lists two Hawaiʻi farms it operates in partnership:

• Kamananui, an agroforest orchard on the North Shore at the foot of Mount Kaʻala, run with Cacao Services Inc. The company calls it a hub for cacao breeding in Hawaiʻi. On its farm-tour page it claims Kamananui is the most genetically diverse cacao farm in the world.
• Honoliʻi Orchards on Hawaiʻi Island, where it has worked with farm manager Colin Hart since 2019.

It also buys from growers in Waimānalo, which it says produced enough cacao for the first single-origin Waimānalo bar in 2021. Other Hawaiʻi sources it lists include Waiāhole, Kona, Haleʻiwa and Mililani, plus farms in places like Ecuador, the Dominican Republic, Tanzania and Uganda.

Coffee is the newest crop. Taketa reported that the company recently planted a couple hundred coffee trees in Waialua. Beans from those trees are headed for the chocolate bars first and, in a few years, the café. Butterbaugh told the magazine his end goal is “a large chocolate factory sitting on a large cacao orchard” where people can learn how it’s grown and made.

The name isn’t about the valley. The company says the Hawaiian word mānoa means solid, vast and depth, and that it picked the name with that meaning in mind.

How to visit

• Kailua shop and café, 333 Uluniu St.: Free tastes are part of the experience, per HONOLULU Magazine. The café pours chocolate-and-coffee drinks, like a cortado made by melting Mānoa milk chocolate under espresso, and sells house-roasted beans. The magazine listed café hours as 7 a.m. to 4 p.m. daily in July. Phone (808) 263-6292.
• Wine bar: The company lists hours of Thursday–Saturday 5–7 p.m. and Sunday 9 a.m.–5 p.m. A guided Sip & Pair with four 2-ounce pours, each matched with a chocolate and a charcuterie bite, is Thursday through Saturday at 5:30 p.m. for $65 per person, booked on FareHarbor.
• Factory tour: The factory tour is a self-guided, 45-minute walk through the chocolate-making process, from roasting to finished treats, with tastings. It costs $35 for adults (13 and up), $20 for ages 5 to 12, and kids 4 and under are free. It’s at a separate location from the Kailua shop; you get the meeting point and parking directions when you book. Heads up: there are 56 steps up, and back down.
• Farm tour: The Kamananui farm tour on the North Shore includes a fresh cacao fruit tasting and a chocolate tasting in the orchard pavilion. The company warns you’ll likely meet wild peacocks “and a pig or two.” Book through the website.
• Waikīkī: 227 Lewers St., Unit R106, (808) 810-4491. Royal Hawaiian Center: 2201 Kalākaua Ave., Space A112, (808) 991-7624.

If you’re working on a holiday list, the company’s online shop has gift boxes and flavored bars like guava, lilikoʻi and coffee alongside the single-origin bars. Prices are on manoachocolate.com.

Sources

• University of Hawaiʻi News, “From bean to bar, UH alum turned international chocolatier got his start at Mānoa” (Nov. 12, 2023): https://www.hawaii.edu/news/2023/11/12/manoa-chocolate-butterbaugh/
• HONOLULU Magazine, “Coffee Meets Chocolate at Mānoa Chocolate’s Café,” Mari Taketa (Oct. 2026): https://www.honolulumagazine.com/manoa-chocolate-cafe/
• HONOLULU Magazine, “Mānoa Chocolate Opens a Coffee Roaster and Café” (July 2026): https://www.honolulumagazine.com/manoa-chocolate-coffee-roaster-cafe/
• HONOLULU Magazine, “Mānoa Chocolate’s New Chocolate Factory Opens with a Drink Lab and Gelato Bar” (May 2019): https://www.honolulumagazine.com/manoa-chocolates-new-chocolate-factory-opens-with-a-drink-lab-and-gelato-bar/
• HONOLULU Magazine, “Open Bar” (June 2012): https://www.honolulumagazine.com/open-bar/
• Mānoa Chocolate: Our Story, Our Cacao, Our Process, FAQ, Factory Tour, Farm Tour, Wine Bar and Contact pages (checked Nov. 13, 2026): https://manoachocolate.com/