Every Store has its Story: Holy’s Bakery in Kapa‘au
By Hadley Catalano
It’s pie day at Holy’s Bakery in Kapa‘au, where handmade empty pie shells, stacked high on baking racks, are waiting to be filled with the Hori family’s signature frozen buttered peach, pear, coconut, and apple pie recipes.
While the customary smells of baking won’t be wafting from the small wooden shop tucked behind the Nambu Building on Holy Bakery Road in the heart of the old sugar plantation town, the sight on assembly day, where 750-800 wholesale pies are being filled, weighed, and packaged, is impressive. And the product is even more remarkable!
The historic North Kohala shop, whose name comes from the mispronunciation of Hori (sounding like Holee) has, for the past 82 years, been preparing pastries, fresh breads, and doughnuts for the plantation workers, families, and generations of Hawaiian residents.
“My father, Yoshio Hori, opened the bakery in 1930 to feed the G.I.’s and traveling Japanese salesmen who stayed at the Nambu Hotel during the war,” bakery matriarch Margaret Hori explained. Her father’s business originally opened down the street, then moved behind the hotel when his uncle bought the old Nambu building.
“The bakery became famous, the men would line up at 4 am for fresh white bread and we would deliver bread and anpan, a Japanese sweet roll filled with bean paste, to the camps in Kohala.”
While Yoshio was born in Honolulu in 1903, the family returned home to Hiroshima, Japan, where the young entrepreneur was raised. When Yoshio was a teenager, his family moved back to Hawai‘i, settling in North Kohala where he met his wife Miyako Yanagida. The couple had eight children.
“My parents already had five children by the time they opened the bakery,” Hori explained, noting that her father gained baking experience while working at a Greek restaurant in Honolulu before opening his own shop.
“We started out by mixing everything by hand and making the bread in a metal oven on top of the two-burner kerosene stove (which is still used in the shop today to boil potatoes and make coconut filling). We worked in the bakery and my mother worked in the hotel, which was very busy during the war.”
The introduction of the pies into the bread and pastry production line was Margaret’s idea, a 60-year-old legacy who has kept the bakery popular. Margaret, now in her 80s, is still in the family business with her grandson Ryan Mullen and the occasional help of her retired brother, Richard Hori.
“I tried different recipes using coconut, peach, pear, and apple and then my sister would taste them,” Hori recalled, noting it was around the same time that the Hori family built a home adjacent to the business, where Margaret still lives today. “Then Cash ‘N Carry in Hilo wanted to buy the pies, so we began selling them to grocery stores in 1950.”
The family recipes have remained the same for the past four generations, a tradition that has earned the family a well-known reputation, a street name in memoriam, and a sought after inventory that keeps the pie days busy and the bread baking days frequent.
“We have three to four pie days a month and a bread baking day about once a week,” Mullen, 34, explained about the tactical side of frozen pie assembly and fresh bread production. “We make roughly 750 pies total of peach, pear, and coconut pies on those days and 800 apple on apple pie days.”
The schedule of the six-hour-long assembly production is what Mullen referred to as an art, not necessarily a science. Knowing the ins and outs of baking and having the ability to adjust quickly in the wholesale trade is a valued commodity.
The demand of pies for retail markets, holiday dinner tables, local restaurants, and the in-store freezers determine the amount of days devoted to constructing the frozen treats. There are no preservatives in Holy’s Bakery goods so stock is made to order. Assembly days begin early, 6 am as the Hori family and a couple of local part time workers, who grew up in town and refer to Margaret as their hānai (adopted) grandmother, file into the modest red wooden landmark with a sign outside the doors that reads, “Please Toot Your Horn for Your Order.”
Two days in advance both the bottom and top crust dough layers, handmade out of shortening, flour, sugar, and buttermilk, have been made and neatly folded into aluminum foil 9-inch baking pans and stacked on baker’s racks waiting for the deposit of two cups of filling. The filling is simple; canned apples, peaches, pears, or coconut folded together with sugar and a few spices. The secret is the use of roughly an entire stick of butter—seven patties layered on the bottom crust and seven over the top of the filling that melt into the pie and crust when baking to create a unique flavor profile reflective of old fashioned homemade desserts.
“It’s been the same recipe for all these years,” said Mullen, who grew up in the bakery alongside his mother and grandmother. He can recount the countless weekdays he spent with his family in the business before leaving to travel on the mainland. “I realized when I came home, that we are doing the same thing now that I was taught back when I was a kid. It’s about the consistency and taste. I realized the value our product has, how famous the pies are, and I started reaching out more, getting more contracts and meeting new customers.”
While Mullen spoke, he placed the top crust onto the buttered peach pie his grandmother filled and sealed the dough layers with a crimper, creating a fork-like imprint around the edge. The pie is then brushed with evaporated milk and placed inside a white cardboard box with the Holy’s Bakery logo and short list of ingredients. It’s now ready to be boxed and trucked to KTA stores across the island, shipped to grocery stores on Moloka‘i, Maui, and Kaua‘i, or placed in the in-store freezer.
“When you’re born into the business it’s hard to keep doing it. I also understand that if the younger generations don’t take over, they are killing off part of their heritage. Hopefully my kid will want it,” Mullen reflected, speaking of his 7-year-old son, Kaze.
Although Holy’s has updated machinery, the application of the pie process is still handmade, from the crust to the packaging. Improvements come in the form of fresh ideas and diverse bakery items, including focaccia, brioche, and potato bread rolls. And while any week might have the Hori family baking 1,200 loaves of bread, or preparing 5,500 pies to fill their Thanksgiving orders, it’s the quality and consistency of the simple, handmade products that allow Holy’s Bakery to continue to run a successful business.
“My grandmother is really the backbone of this operation,” said Mullen, noting that she took over many of the day-to-day business logistics before his great grandparents passed more than 20 years ago. “I see everyday how many people appreciate our product and that gives me pride going into work everyday.” ❖
Holy’s Bakery can be reached at 808.889.6865.
Contact writer Hadley Catalano: hadleycatalano@gmail.com
