Mālama Market Pahoa — Local services in Hawaii

The people working there make it great. Friendly, point you in the right direction, genuinely aloha spirit, and resolve things easily. They give you price breaks and a little extra food here and there out of love. Gas card is kinda fun to earn rewards. It seems the owners do understand it is expensive so they have these manager specials, end of day/discount bins which is nice.

The place is very clean and has choices like A2 anti-inflammatory milk from time to time. It also has quite a few organic options and grass fed beef.

The prices are all over the place but mostly over expensive (1.5x to 2x vs Target in Hilo) but it's also because the landlords are overcharging for greed.

I got severe food poisoning from their policy of leaving pizza out for 4 hrs but again, this is a wider problem because the state allowed musubi/spam rolls to be left at room temperature for 4 hrs vs 2 hrs due to ignorant public protests against the state health dept coming down on mom and pops shops selling spam rolls at room temperature all day long. Spam is extra salty and is self preserving. Unfortunately pizza is not and it doesn't translate well. Just avoid their room temp food unless morning/early afternoon.

They also sell a lot of Dole banana whose company ensured the oppression of the Hawaiian queen and locals. They've got some local bananas and I would like to see more. They sell some local food and have da bucks program.

By the way, spam always contains BPA which is hormone disruptor and oxidative stress inducer on the body. Whenever I see locals (trained/oppressed to like junk food) buy tons of these, I feel sick in my being. Any store that sells these and phlatate infused products is sort of selling out ignorantly.

So in conclusion, lovely workers, dark overlords with toxic agendas, and owners caught kinda in the middle doing their best and placating to the awakening middle class Pahoa locals - many on last of their covid money. Stay true to your...

EXPENSIVE. This is the highest priced grocery store on the easy side of the island....likely the entire island.

Also; note to corporate management:

Know your clientele. Quit making greedy decisions. This is Pahoa and there's a lot of lower income people in the area. You all used to offer a 50%discount on OLD food at 7pm and locals really appreciated that. Food wasn't wasted, and you made money off OLD food from lunch.

Fast forward you guys in corporate come visit from another island and change the markdown to 25%.....the excuse being you're loosing money.....albeit on OLD food that will get thrown away if not bought.

I go in one day and am told there's no discount allowed anymore and loads of food is sitting there that likely will get tossed.

Add to this you all told your employees you'd be doing self service food? You obviously don't care about sanitation if you knew how unsanitary that could be in this area.

*Fast forward when visiting the store a man with a long beard was taking bites from produce and spitting them back into the produce area. Though 3 employees spoke to him he was allowed to continue to shop. This is yet another example of how this store puts the health and safety of patrons last. There's people like this around the store and they add a self serve food area. The decisions of upper management here are insane. The prices are insane. Overall, people shop here out of necessity and convenience because this store has a...

Nice large clean modern new store. Friendly helpful staff is the only reason i give it 2 stars. I would give it zero stars if it werent for the good employees down there. We only shop there when we have to. Outrageously extremely high prices on every single product in the store. The sale prices are a laughable total joke. The section in produce where they offer a so called discount on some fruits and veggies are pathetic. They had apples last week at 99 cents a pound, I thought cool I'm going to grab a bag of discounted apples. I was excited! I'm going to have some apples tonight and the next couple days! I started going through the 5 or 6 bags on the cart. DISGUSTING! Bruised and mushy spots!?!???! Whoever the owner is should be ashamed. The apples should've went straight into the trash instead of trying to sell them. The owner or owners should be ashamed! Shame on you! My wife has 11 years in management with a major grocery chain. She knows the business. Most stores have a 75% to 100% mark up on most items this store is no different even worse probably. Nothing like spending $100 for one grocery bag of food. Longs in pahoa right around the corner one block away is where you...