Ted’s Bakery at 39: How a Sunset Beach Country Store Became the Home of Chocolate Haupia Pie

If you have ever brought a chocolate haupia pie to a potluck, there is a good chance it came from a green building on Kamehameha Highway at Sunset Beach. Ted’s Bakery sells its pies in supermarkets around the state now, but the business is still run by the same family, from the same 1956 store, about 2½ miles past Waimea Bay.

Here is how a country store that once sold gas and a few groceries became one of Oʻahu’s most famous bakeries.

A family store at Sunset Beach

The Nakamura family’s story on the North Shore starts with Torojiro Nakamura, who came from Kumamoto, Japan, in 1906 to work on a sugar plantation and later farmed land near Kahuku, according to the bakery’s own history page. In 1956, his son Takemitsu and Takemitsu’s wife, Eva, opened the Sunset Beach Store on family land, the Star-Advertiser reported in 2020. Back then it sold gas and a few grocery items.

The parents leased the store out in 1965 so they could focus on farming, and the tenant ran it for 20 years, older son Glenn Nakamura told the Honolulu Star-Bulletin in 1999. In 1985 Glenn, who had spent several years teaching, came back to run the family store. Within months he noticed the shop kept running out of bread and selling a lot of packaged bakery snacks, especially during surf season.

Enter Ted

Glenn’s younger brother, Ted, was a trained baker. He graduated from Kahuku High in 1976 and had worked as a hotel pastry chef, including at the Kahala Hotel, according to Hawaii Business Magazine. In July 1987, at 28, he opened Ted’s Bakery inside the family store. At first he made doughnuts, cornbread and a few pastries.

Pies came a little later, and by request. Ted began making macadamia nut cream pies for a Haleʻiwa restaurant, Jameson’s by the Sea, and sold the extras in the shop. (He told the Star-Bulletin in 1999 that the pie orders started in 1989; in a 2004 talk at BYU–Hawaiʻi he put the start of pie production at 1990.) That first Thanksgiving, the bakery sold 400 pies, BYU–Hawaiʻi reported from the talk.

The pie that was “like a mistake”

Blueberry, strawberry and chocolate macadamia nut cream pies followed. Then came the one that changed everything. Ted was making a haupia cake while others in the kitchen were making a chocolate pie, and he put the leftover haupia and chocolate cream together in one crust. “It was like a mistake,” he told the Star-Bulletin. Employees tasted it and told him to sell it.

Accounts differ on the exact year. The Star-Advertiser put it around 1996, while Ted described it in early 1999 as about a year earlier. Either way, the chocolate haupia pie took off. By 2020 it made up half of the roughly 250,000 pies Ted’s sold each year, and it had won the Star-Advertiser’s Hawaiʻi’s Best award four years running, the paper reported.

Ted has said there is no secret recipe. He told the Star-Advertiser the trick to the crust is to “bake ’em good, till it’s golden brown, not white,” before the filling goes in, and the bakery uses 100% butter, cream and vanilla.

Pies by fax, delivered to town

The real boom came in the late 1990s, when the brothers started driving pies into Honolulu. Glenn told BYU–Hawaiʻi students that it began with one Honolulu customer who called to order 18 pies. He faxed out a flyer, the bakery sold 246 pies the next week, and within two months it was making about 1,300 a week. The Star-Bulletin reported in 1999 that delivery orders were 1,000 of the 1,500 pies the bakery sold each week, and that pies had grown to about 90% of its business.

Supermarkets called next. Ted told Hawaii Business that schools, doctors’ offices and florists called first, then Times, Foodland and Star Markets, and his daughter Torey said in 2017 that wholesale made up about half of sales. In 2007 he went to Chiba, Japan, to train bakers to make his pies and cakes for a store chain there, the magazine reported.

Plate lunches and the next generation

A few years before 2000, the store also started serving breakfast, lunch and dinner plates with picnic tables outside, according to the Star-Advertiser. Today the bakery’s website lists garlic shrimp, loco moco, a fried rice special and the pineapple macadamia nut cheesecake among its most popular items.

It is still a family operation. When Glenn spoke at BYU–Hawaiʻi in 2004, he said their mother, Eva, then 82, still got up at 5:30 every morning to open the store. Glenn retired in 2016. By 2020, Ted described himself as semi-retired, and his daughters Torey and Caylen were overseeing the business, with Torey as director of operations and Caylen, a pastry school graduate, as food safety manager, the Star-Advertiser reported. During the pandemic the retail side closed for a time, and wholesale pies kept the company going.

What to get

• Chocolate haupia pie: the one that made the name. A 9-inch pie is $19.95 on the bakery’s Thanksgiving price list (as of Oct. 7, 2026).
• For the holiday table: pumpkin haupia ($19.95), pumpkin cream ($19.95), an 8-inch baked pumpkin pie ($17.75) or pecan ($19.75).
• Something different: strawberry guava, lilikoʻi cheese or macadamia nut cream ($20.95 each), or the 8-inch “Banana Banana,” banana cake and banana cream in a baked crust ($19.45).
• Cakes: chantilly ($32.95), dobash ($30.95) and pineapple macadamia nut cheesecake ($35.95). A dozen Waimea butter rolls are $14.95.
• If you’re eating there: a garlic shrimp plate or a mahimahi sandwich. Torey Nakamura told Hawaii Business in 2017 that the mahimahi was the top-selling hot sandwich, and her own pick from the case was the glazed doughnut.

Thanksgiving 2026: how to pre-order

Ted’s is taking Thanksgiving pre-orders through Tuesday, Nov. 24, according to its Thanksgiving page.

• Pickup days: Wednesday, Nov. 25, or Thursday, Nov. 26, for cream pies, cakes and baked pies.
• Order online: click “Order Online” on tedsbakery.com, scroll to “Future Pickups” and choose your pickup day.
• Order by phone: call the shop at (808) 638-8207 or the office at (808) 638-5974 (office hours 8 a.m. to 2 p.m. weekdays). There is no minimum, and you pay at pickup because the bakery can’t take payment over the phone.
• Pickup: inside the retail shop. The bakery says there will be no express line this year.
• Thanksgiving week hours: 7 a.m. to 6:30 p.m. Wednesday, Nov. 25, and 7 a.m. to 3 p.m. Thursday, Nov. 26. Regular hours, 8 a.m. to 6:30 p.m., return Friday, Nov. 27.
• No order? The bakery says it will have pies and cakes for walk-in customers that week, but your favorite flavor may be gone.

Know before you go

• Where: 59-024 Kamehameha Hwy., Sunset Beach (Haleʻiwa mailing address)
• Hours: daily, 8 a.m. to 6:30 p.m.
• Phone: (808) 638-8207
• Online: tedsbakery.com, Instagram @tedsbakeryhi

Planning more North Shore stops? See our North Shore surf contest guide, and for the rest of the holiday table, our Thanksgiving 2026 guide.

Related on Oahu Local: Oahu Restaurants · More North Shore stories · How Liliha Bakery Grew From a Tiny Liliha Street Shop Into Six Coco Puff Counters

Sources

• Ted’s Bakery, “Our Story” and Thanksgiving 2026 pre-order flyer, product list (as of Oct. 7, 2026) and FAQ (checked Nov. 15, 2026): https://www.tedsbakery.com/ and https://www.tedsbakery.com/thanksgiving/
• Honolulu Star-Advertiser, “A longtime North Shore fixture, Ted’s Bakery continues to turn out its popular pies despite the pandemic,” Pat Gee (Dec. 13, 2020): https://www.staradvertiser.com/2020/12/13/features/a-longtime-north-shore-fixture-teds-bakery-continues-to-turn-out-its-popular-pies-despite-the-pandemic/
• Honolulu Star-Bulletin (Feb. 8, 1999): https://archives.starbulletin.com/1999/02/08/news/story8.html
• BYU–Hawaiʻi, “Family’s Commitment to High Quality Turns a Sunset Beach Bakery into a Big Success,” Mike Foley (Feb. 4, 2004): https://news.byuh.edu/familys-commitment-to-high-quality-turns-a-sunset-beach-bakery-into-a-big-success
• Hawaii Business Magazine, “Ted’s Bakery Is Much More Than Just Pies,” Jackie M. Young (Nov. 1, 2017): https://www.hawaiibusiness.com/much-more-than-just-pies/