Kaya's Kawanui — Restaurant in Hawaii

Used to be my favorite place until today, first time we let it go because a girl had an attitude when asking about the food ingredientes, this was like a year ago.

We came back and we love the food until I found a black hair on mi quiche and the girls didn’t do anything besides saying -ok I’ll let them know, after I left they starting laughing. Maybe it wasn’t because of me, but it felt a little rude.

Second my husband ordered the food for us, we were a big kinda of party so there was some confusion among us plus we were wearing mask, we took one smoothie which we thought belonged to our party but it wasn’t however it was called in with our order, anyways.

The girl making the drinks started to give us a strong look while we were eating which made us pretty uncomfortable we didn’t know what’s up.

We took some stickers and went to pay, when we were in cashier, she told me, excuse me but you didn’t Pay for that smoothie. After expending like 100$ with our whole party maybe more. Why we would want to sneak or steal a smoothie? She could come to our table and just letting us know nicely. She jumped to conclusions and gave me attitude. When our order was called in, 2 smoothies came together which made us assumed it was with our party.

We loved the food and quality ingredients but after the customer service we had today, we used to be repeat customers and spend at least 50$ each visit.

After today never again.

Kayas owner, please if you read this keep an eye on your staff maybe some customer service training...

Update: 5/20/2023 as an aside, have been going to Kaya's since the first week they opened years ago. Food is good. Coffee is good but nothing spectacular. Lavender Matcha was very strong thick matcha. According to friend, difficult to drink. Took 35 minutes to get three drinks and s'mores bar. I understand this isn't fast food but that's a bit long. Ran my credit card and gave a CASH tip so they wouldn't have to pay taxes on tips. Waiting for receipt and barista leans over and starts saying about how I need to finish touching the screen buttons and if I didn't want to give a tip she "guess that's ok" but we needed to finish up. She repeated the tip part several times. I was confused and pointed out there's nothing more to process. The screen only shows Kaya's on it. Finally the register person spoke up and told the barista that we already finished paying and it was all ok. Very weird. All tables were taken and several people waiting for their orders including our group. The barista kept telling us she would call us so no need to stand there but where were we supposed to go? I'm glad they're doing so well but honestly miss the days when there were only a few people chilling here at any given time of the day and service was friendly.

Original review: 2018 Good coffee, great vegetarian and vegan options. The best vegan...

First time checking out this spot as I was passing by. The girl at the front taking the orders was really nice, the food was alright, and the lady who made the smoothies was friendly but the operation and service overall was lacking.

As a current business owner and someone who spent many years managing the front house of a restaurant and a cafe, it was quite unfortunate to witness employees standing around when there are so many obvious opportunities to help the process along and give the customers a better experience.

There seemed to be 2 people of the 5 behind the counter who didn't know what to do but talk and laugh while the line of cups for drinks and orders grew over 10 deep. Our food came out before our smoothie and we waited as we watched that one lady tackle the line of cups by herself to finally complete the orders of numerous customers.

It's not difficult to learn to make smoothies or coffee drinks and it would have been much appreciated by everyone (both customers waiting and likely that one employee) if the others would lend a helping hand.

I'd probably give it another shot (if I had some extra time to waste while driving by) just to taste the other veg options on the menu but otherwise not somewhere I'd go out...