BREW-HAHA
Starbucks is coming
Stories By Cynthia Oi
to Manoa, and small business
Coffee Manoa braces
for the changes
Star-BulletinEVERYONE wants the same thing from a coffee bar. A place to meet friends, to sit and talk, to unwind. A place where you feel welcome and comfortable. In other words, a place where everybody knows your name.
Kathy Maddux has such a place, a small shop called Coffee Manoa in Manoa Marketplace.
Dean McPhail and his partners have 12 such places, all called Starbucks, on Oahu, Maui and the Big Island. One more more will open later this month across the street from Manoa Marketplace.
Maddux has been in business for 15 years; McPhail and his Coffee Partners Hawaii, since 1996.Maddux, her employees, loyal customers and friends are upset that Starbucks is moving into their neighborhood, fearing that the coffee giant will eliminate one more small business in Hawaii.
Maddux views Starbucks as a "mega-corporate business." McPhail says Coffee Partners is "a group of local guys" trying to do business in a place they love. He says Starbucks isn't into wiping other shops off the retail map and that its presence may even help Coffee Manoa.
Both Maddux and McPhail are passionate people, who love their businesses and try to run them with a conscience. Both connect with their communities. Both care about their customers and employees.
But one has a big-money, high-profile image, the other a home-spun, low-key existence.
The perception of conflict here is all-too-familiar in Hawaii: the big, faceless mainland company vs. the little local business, the outsiders vs. the locals.
Maddux & Friends
By Cynthia Oi
Star-BulletinKATHY Maddux created Coffee Manoa in the image of the Freeway Coffee House that operated at the Church of the Crossroads in the late 1960s.
"The whole sense of the place was for people to gather and to talk and to share ideas and to play music," Maddux said.
So when a coffee shop came up for sale in the marketplace, she and her then-husband jumped to buy it, bringing that community philosophy with them.
Coffee Manoa thrived, she said, because "it has become an integral part of many people's lives.
"I have a good number of customers who move away and when they come back here they go 'Oh, I am so glad you're still here.' It's like an anchor spot for them, a place of grounding."
Maddux, 52, remains grounded there. Her work days begin at 6:30 in the morning, and she's often there in the evening to close up. In between, she sneaks off to surf or paddle.
A Japanese-American born in Minnesota, she came to the islands when she was a child. Although her parents moved the family away again, she returned 17 years ago,essentially to allow her now-adult children to grow up in a multi-cultural setting.
She's had offers for her shop. "But every time I would try to sell, I couldn't do it because the store means so much to me. It's not just a business. I run the store as a place of community."
She believes small businesses in Hawaii should work together and uses as many local purveyors as she can. She also tries to support women in business; most of her employees are young women.
Maddux wants her workers to have an emotional investment in their jobs.
"You go to a job to make money, but beyond that there should be other things that make the job fulfilling. Being a barista and a sales clerk in itself isn't all that exciting, but when you add that element of human connection to it, it becomes very important in your life and it adds to who you are and who you might grow into."
Natalia Lugani, 20, has worked at Coffee Manoa for about 18 months, but she's been part of the scene since her Punahou School days, when she'd come to sip coffee and study.
She enjoys a relationship with Maddux that goes beyond worker and boss: "We eat dinner together, she listens to my problems. She helped me understand my responsibilities, what I should be as a woman and a human being."
Lugani also has made friends with the customers, greeting them by name and being greeted in turn.
One of them is Paul Berry, a retired Punahou economics teacher and former Manoa resident. He says Maddux's employees are the beneficiaries of her business, not so much in pay as in their souls.
"Kathy's always looking after them, trying to push them to do their best, to go to school, do what's right," he says.
He's been a Coffee Manoa customer "since it first opened" and though he now lives in Kaneohe, he makes the drive over the Koolaus every Tuesday when he meets with a half dozen retired friends "to sort out the problems of the world."
"This," he said, gesturing around the shop, "is a community center that Kathy runs, and people do business here, meet here because they're comfortable. It's almost as if we feel we are emotional shareholders in this place.""
"You just don't get the same feeling in a Starbucks," he said.
"A community loses diversity and uniqueness when you have a Starbucks," he said. "I was in one in D.C., one in California -- it was the same place."
"If you want that I-feel-at-home-at-McDonald's feeling, I suppose that's the place for you. But if you'd like to have something particular to your own needs and interests, that has a sense of community and personality, then Starbucks is the enemy," Berry said.
"We should not be willing to take price and sameness as the measure of what we purchase because part of what we get here is a service and a feeling. There's an emotional reward.
"We're all looking for connections."
McPhail and friends
By Cynthia Oi
Star-BulletinDEAN McPhail sips a cup of coffee outside Starbucks at Ward Village. This shop has proven to be a strong segment of Coffee Partners Hawaii's holdings, bustling with tourists, office workers and people just hanging out.
McPhail, 38, came to Hawaii 10 years ago from Florida, where he worked in the restaurant business, to head Pacific Video Entertainment Group, which owned the Blockbuster Video franchise in Hawaii and Guam. When the franchise was sold, McPhail wasn't sure what he wanted to do.
Then he recalled that while running Blockbuster, he and Greg Meier and his brother, Scott McPhail, two other Coffee Partners, would go out almost every day for coffee.
"Even if it was a meeting, it was still a break from that daily grind," he said, no pun intended.
That led to the forming of Coffee Partners and its relationship with the Seattle-based Starbucks Corp. as its only licensee.
The partners have what some see as a magical money-making coffee machine.
What many don't know, McPhail said, is that Coffee Partners is still in the start-up stage, that the money isn't pouring in.
"But we love the whole environment," referring to the company's philosophy: to provide people with a "third place" to enjoy coffee, other than at home or office.
"We give people a place to go where they can be with their friends or business associates," he said.
"Ward Village was the store that everyone was surprised about," said the Michigan-born McPhail. "It has become a real community deal. You go down there every day and it's the same folks. They've all gotten to know each other."
He doesn't think setting up a Starbucks near Maddux's shop will hurt her business and isn't going to Manoa to do that.
"The coffee business is a very repetitive type of business and I think she has an established customer base that will stay with her regardless of whether we're there or not."
Besides, he said, coffee accessories, such as thermal cups and mugs, are a big part of Starbucks.
"If Kathy really took a look, she'd see what a different type of business we are," he said.
"We're bringing people out and into the neighborhood, which is not only good for us but good for everyone around us."
At Ward Village, Starbucks has proven to be a good neighbor for Powder Edge, a store that sells outdoor gear.
"We tap into their customer clientele because we share the age group and demographics. There's synergy," said general manager John Nakajima.
Harri Buquet lives in Manoa and has patronized Coffee Manoa, but almost every afternoon he can be found in the brown upholstered easy chair in a corner next to a window at Starbucks Ward Village.
The former hotel pool manager sips coffee while writing his autobiography on a laptop. He likes the "dynamics and the people" there.
Originally from Finland, Buquet is pleased that the coffee culture so prevalent in Europe has finally crossed over to Hawaii.
"It's a wonderful, affordable way to spend the day," he said.
"I sometimes think maybe I should hang out elsewhere, but the employees say, 'No, Harri, it wouldn't be the same without you,' " he said.
Michael Hess lives in Kailua but stops at Ward Village several times a week, often to share a table with Buquet and other coffee companions.
When he was badly injured recently in a motorcycle accident, "The only people who sent me flowers were the people who work here," he said. "What does that say to you? It says to me that they care."
Maui-born Jeff Wachter, 31, has worked at Starbucks for a year. He enjoys coming to work everyday ("Can't say that about a lot of jobs"); likes the parade of different customers ("Some real characters"); and likes the company ("Probably the most organized place I've worked for").
"It's a hangout, an alternative to a bar. Its clean, well-lit and doesn't have the reputation thing like a bar," Wachter said.
At Starbucks, Buquet added, "It's not so much the cup of coffee or the music, but the feeling you get when you walk in the door and know the people and know that you are welcome and people care about you. What we have here is a community."
