Walk into Kona Biscuit Co. before seven in the morning and the first thing you notice isn't the coffee. It's the mural on the wall, hand-painted by co-owner Phillip and his brother as a tribute to the island they grew up on. The restaurant itself came from a simpler impulse. Owner Melanie, who was raised in Naʻalehu, kept coming home to Waikoloa with her husband Bill and having the same thought every visit: this place needed a real breakfast spot. So she and Bill built one, brought in best friend Matthew and his husband Phillip to run it alongside them, and opened the doors in early February.
That story matters more than a new menu usually would, because Queens' Marketplace has spent most of its life as a national-brand address. Its current major tenant roster includes Tommy Bahama's Marlin Bar, Reyn Spooner, OluKai, Rip Curl, Crocs, and the Waikoloa Luxury Cinemas, according to the leasing documents Alexander & Baldwin uses to market the property. Those are recognizable names built for a visitor with a rental car and a week to spend. What arrived over the past year is a different kind of tenant, one built by people who already live here and got tired of driving into Kona for their morning coffee.
The Openings Nobody Outside Waikoloa Tracked
Six new businesses opened at Queens' Marketplace in the back half of 2025, and two more followed in the first weeks of 2026. Alexander & Baldwin's leasing manager Matt Schull described the pace as unusually strong, driven by what he called both local entrepreneurs and national brands looking to establish a footprint on Hawaii Island. Reading the actual list, the local half of that sentence is doing more work than it might first appear.
| Business | Opened | What it added |
|---|---|---|
| Rip Curl | September 2025 | Surf apparel and wetsuits |
| KoaWood Ranch | September 2025 | Koa wood lifestyle goods |
| Pacific Skin Institute | September 2025 | Dermatology, adult and pediatric |
| Pono Pastries | October 2025 | Small-batch malasadas and doughnuts |
| Tommy Bahama Marlin Bar | October 2025 | Full-service dining and retail |
| Patina | February 2026 | New American gastropub |
| Kona Biscuit Co. / The Roost | February 2026 | Breakfast café by day, steakhouse by night |
| Snorkel Bob's | early 2026 | Snorkel and dive gear |
A second Oshima Surf & Skate location opened around the same window, expanding a business that was already on-site. Pono Pastries built its identity around local sourcing. Patina, led by Chef Keith Pajinag, leans on local flavors for its cocktail and comfort-food menu. None of that reads like a marketplace trying to look more like a shopping mall. It reads like one trying to function as an actual commercial strip for the people who live along Waikoloa Beach Drive.
The clearest evidence is what Kona Biscuit Co. actually does with its space. By day it's a scratch kitchen serving biscuits and Kona coffee starting at six in the morning. Three nights a week, Wednesday through Saturday, the same kitchen becomes The Roost, a Hawaii regional steakhouse with a happy hour that starts at three. That's not a menu built to catch a tourist walking past once. It's a schedule built for someone who might show up twice in the same week.
The Market That Isn't Weekly, and Why That's the Point
If you've heard about the Thursday market at Queens' Marketplace and assumed it runs every week, you'd be forgiven, since a fair amount of casual write-ups describe it that way. The actual schedule, confirmed on the resort's own event page and repeated across two separate segments on Honolulu's KHON2, is the second and fourth Thursday of every month, from 3:30 to 6:00 p.m. That's a meaningfully different commitment than a weekly market. A weekly market is background noise, something that's simply always there. A twice-monthly one asks people to actually remember the date.
Melanie Echavez, who handles property marketing and operations for Alexander & Baldwin, put the intent behind the Queens' Culinary Market plainly:
"The inspiration behind the market was to create a space where locals and visitors alike can come together to enjoy locally grown produce, artisanal products, and support local businesses, all while celebrating the rich culinary ingenuity of Hawaii Island."
The vendor list backs up that framing. Past markets have featured Big Island Smoked, Kohala Food Hub, Puakalehua Homestead, and Cacao Cocoon, alongside a beer garden run by Waikoloa Shrimp Co. and live sets from local musicians Scott Buchholz and Ryan Higgins, who performs as HIGGS. It's a lineup built from farms and small producers already working this side of the island, not a traveling festival circuit dropped in for the season.
The Rest of the Calendar
The Culinary Market isn't the only fixed point. The Waikoloa Music & Cultural Festival kicks off each year with a free performance at Queens' Marketplace's Coronation Pavilion, this year featuring sets from Ryan Hiraoka and Sean Naʻauao, before the main event moves down to Waikoloa Bowl in the Queens' Gardens for a longer afternoon of music and food. And every Fourth of July, the marketplace runs its own version of a block party, with KWXX radio personality G. Cruz broadcasting live, sidewalk sales from merchants like Coconut Ave. and Olivia Clare Boutique, and food specials that this year included a prime rib loco moco from Kona Biscuit Co. and a fresh sugar cane daiquiri special from Kuleana Rum Shack.
None of these events are new inventions. What's changed is who's showing up in the vendor and merchant lists behind them. A few years ago that Fourth of July lineup would have leaned almost entirely on the marketplace's national retail tenants for sidewalk sales. This year it included a locally founded breakfast restaurant offering its own themed menu, because that restaurant now exists and has a stake in the day.
What This Actually Signals
A shopping center's tenant mix isn't usually worth this much attention, but the shift at Queens' Marketplace says something specific about how the area around Waikoloa Beach Resort is being used day to day. For years, the center's anchor identity ran through recognizable national names built to catch visitor spend during a single stay. The 2025 and 2026 openings didn't replace that identity so much as add a second layer to it, one built by people who plan to be back next Tuesday, not just this vacation.
Kona Biscuit Co.'s founders didn't build a restaurant because market research told them Waikoloa needed one. They built it because they kept noticing the gap themselves, on repeated trips home. That's a different kind of confidence than a national chain doing a site-selection study, and it's the kind of confidence that tends to show up when a place has enough of a resident base to support a business built for regulars rather than one-time visitors.
If you're already living near Waikoloa Beach Drive, the practical version of all this is simple. Breakfast doesn't require a drive into Kona anymore. The market worth putting on the calendar runs twice a month, not every week, so it's worth an actual note rather than a vague plan to swing by. And the merchant list at every seasonal event, from July sidewalk sales to the music festival kickoff, is a decent running scorecard for how much of this marketplace now belongs to people who call this coast home rather than people passing through it.
If you're curious about what else is shifting along this stretch of the Kohala Coast, from new construction to the rhythm of daily life in Waikoloa Beach Resort, Aloha Kona Realty keeps a close eye on both the market and the neighborhood it sits inside.
