© 2024 Hawaiʻi Public Radio
Play Live Radio
Next Up:
0:00
0:00
0:00 0:00
Available On Air Stations

Fresh Café Closes its Doors

Nick Yee
Nick Yee

Two locations of a popular Honolulu café chain are suddenly closing their doors.

Fresh Café opened in 2009 on Queen Street- drawing crowds into a light industrial area not traditionally frequented by the public.

The café opened up its second location in Chinatown a little over a year ago in the space formerly occupied by Indigo restaurant.

Since opening the space has helped to incubate Honolulu’s art and music scene- hosting events like Art+Flea, Pow!Wow! Hawai‘i and the HawaiiSLAM First Thursday poetry slam.

Owner Tiffany Tanaka and her business partners decided to part ways after failing to find common ground over everyday business practices. 

Both locations remained opened on Tuesday to say a final farewell to customers.  Tanaka says she hopes to reopen the café in the future- although she has no definitive plans in place yet.

Nick Yee’s passion for music developed at an early age, as he collected jazz and rock records pulled from dusty locations while growing up in both Southern California and Honolulu. In college he started DJing around Honolulu, playing Jazz and Bossa Nova sets at various lounges and clubs under the name dj mr.nick. He started to incorporate Downtempo, House and Breaks into his sets as his popularity grew, eventually getting DJ residences at different Chinatown locations. To this day, he is a fixture in the Honolulu underground club scene, where his live sets are famous for being able to link musical and cultural boundaries, starting mellow and building the audience into a frenzy while steering free of mainstream clichés.
Related Stories