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Hawaii's iconic Love's Bakery is closing after 170 years. Here's what that means for the state.
Nathan Bek Updated 9:57 pm, Saturday, March 20, 2021
Growing up in the volatile economy in Hawaii, I was used to seeing businesses come and go. Small businesses might thrive in the beginning, lose their novelty, and then slowly fade away. Other local staples would become statewide chains, and they eventually would lose their homestyle feel and appeal.
Every shop seemed ephemeral. Except one, which seemed permanent as our daily bread: Love’s Bakery.
Love’s Bakery made the buns for our barbecues. The stuffing at our Thanksgiving. The doughnuts at our parties. Its iconic red-and-white-checkered packaging, ingrained in my childhood memories, conjures up celebrations, family and home. It seemed like Love’s always had a seat at the table, in my family, and in the history of Hawaii.
But after years of decline, and a devastating gut punch from COVID-19, Hawaii received the dreaded news: On March 31, Love’s will cease all operations.
Love’s products were familiar and ubiquitous. It supplied our local grocery stores, schools, hotels and restaurants with breads and baked goods. It also supported the Hawaii Foodbank and many other local nonprofit groups. When it closes later this month, nearly 1,800 customer accounts will be permanently discontinued, which amounts to 400,000 loaves distributed weekly. This will mean that many local managers will need to restructure their supply chains, which officials warn will drive up their costs.
“It’s the trickle-down effect,” Hawaii Restaurant Association Executive Director Sheryl Matsuoka said in a KHON2 interview. “As the hotels and restaurants are not open, then, of course, we are not ordering from Love’s, and now this is one of the casualties of this pandemic.”
The company blames COVID-19 for its demise. By the end of the month, the production lines will sputter to a halt, and the deliveries it has made for more than a century will stop. It’ll also be laying off all 231 of its employees.
“Love’s local management is committed to closing its doors in a responsible manner. We wish to thank all of our employees, suppliers, customers, friends, neighbors, and business partners for their loyalty and support,” the company said in a statement to the media.
Love’s was originally named Biscuit & Bread Co. and was founded in 1851. Its name comes from its founder, Robert Love, a Scottish baker who immigrated from Sydney, Australia.
To put those 170 years in context, the company predates the Civil War, the 1918 flu pandemic and the overthrow of the Hawaiian monarchy. When Love started the company, King Kamehameha III was the king of Hawaii.
The city of Honolulu, at the time, looked very different. There were only about 10,000 residents, compared to the nearly 340,000 that live here now. Foreign laborers were just starting to arrive, the island’s first post office had just opened, and Hawaii transhipped whale oil and bone.
Love’s bakery, in some ways, grew and struggled with the island, and the world. It sold bread before the invention of the Model T, before the first Wright Brothers flight and before the 19th amendment, which allowed women to vote. Furthermore, Love’s was making bread when Abraham Lincoln was assassinated.
In fact, many of the major events in Hawaii’s history played a role in the company’s evolution and growth. The two world wars, for example, created a demand so large for bread and baked goods that it decided to run its bakery 24 hours a day at the time.
As the island grew, Love’s expanded, adopting a wholesale model by 1932. Then, to respond to increased demand for bread and baked goods during World War II, it opened a new plant in Kapahulu, Hawaii, in 1943. It featured a 144-foot-long oven that put out 8,000 loaves an hour. The company claimed that it was the biggest in the world at the time.
By 1945, Love’s was flying its products to neighboring islands by charter plane. The bakery called the plane a “flying bakery truck.”
During these periods, Love’s brand image and presence in Hawaii survived, despite alternating ownership. The Love family owned the bakery until 1968. They eventually sold it to ITT Continental Baking, which held on for 13 years before selling it to First Baking Co. of Japan in 1981. By 2008, managers at the firm returned ownership to local investors in Hawaii, which they promised would bring new investment to upgrade the company to adapt for the future.
In more recent years, though, local competition started to heat up. La Tour Cafe, a growing wholesale and retail bakery, expanded from its Oahu Chinatown origins. It recently acquired contracts with Costco, Whole Foods and Hawaiian Airlines, among others, to purchase its baked goods and desserts.
“We have worked diligently to cut expenses, to maintain our market share and to remedy our operational difficulties, however under the current business environment we are no longer able to continue operations,” Love’s Bakery said, in a statement to the media.
But Love's always felt like Hawaii’s bakery, so the announcement of its closure set a new tone for the future of Hawaii’s economic prospects.
Love’s said it was “seriously delinquent” on rent costs. It also said that it did not qualify for another round of receiving a Payment Protection Program loan. A first PPP loan that it received in April provided the bakery with about $2.8 million, according to government records. Love’s reported using all of it on payroll expenses.
Love’s was not the only business in Hawaii to struggle, of course; many other businesses have been forced to close their doors during the pandemic. Through April to September, 43% of businesses experienced “extreme hardship” covering rent costs, another 40% struggled with covering payroll and another 36.7% struggled with covering operating expenses, according to the Department of Business, Economic Development and Tourism. More than one in 10 companies had permanently closed by September, according to a survey on Yelp.
Love’s also blamed Hawaii’s geographic isolation for its struggles, citing supply-chain disruptions as one of the main reasons for closing.
“COVID-19 has also impacted many of our mainland suppliers causing delays in the ingredients and replacement parts for our aging bakery equipment,” its Federal Worker Adjustment and Retraining Notification (WARN) letter and Hawaii Dislocated Workers Act notice said. “With the decline in revenue and the increasing expenses to keep a bakery running, we have made the difficult decision to cease operations as a faltering business.”
Love’s hired Oahu Auctions to liquidate its equipment and fixtures in April. Where all its employees will go when the business shutters is something we’ll have to wait and see.
The closure, in retrospect, looks like a direct case study for Hawaii’s leaders and entrepreneurs. After 170 years, Love’s bakery stood the test of time, but in the aftermath of the pandemic, it could not maintain its ability to be a self-sustaining business. To move forward, the next businesses will need to grow into the economies of scale that Love’s had, work with local suppliers and competitors, and also diversify its clientele.
For the rest of us in Hawaii, we’ll need to reckon with all these business closures. And with so many of them, there will be opportunities for the next batch of entrepreneurs to restructure our economy. In that sense, we’ll have the opportunity to fall in love with new businesses.
For now, though, all we can do is say farewell to our beloved bakery and begin to imagine a Hawaii without it.
Nathan Bek is a finance and journalism major at UH Manoa. He is the former CEO of Lucy’s Lab Creamery, and he is the current chair of the Calvin Shindo Student Venture Fund at UH.
