While Lahaina residents still struggle with housing, the business community is facing its own challenges. None of the commercial structures on Front Street have been rebuilt, and just 33 of 174 non-residential permit applications have been approved.
Several months after the Lahaina fires, HPR carried a live broadcast from the Maui Kuʻia Estate Chocolate factory in Lahaina. Remarkably, the factory did not burn down, despite the fact that structures only yards away were completely destroyed.
The Conversation has been sharing the company’s story from pre-fires to post. Kuʻia continues to win awards for its chocolate and has expanded its operations with factory tours — but its owner says it is only bringing in a fraction of the revenue it earned before the fires.
HPR’s DW Gibson recently visited with the CEO of the company, Gunars Valkirs. He was working a Sunday shift on the factory floor and had just finished making Maui Dark Chocolate.
“Well, things have not recovered obviously, since the fire,” Valkirs said. ”It's not that the fire damaged this property. It didn't, but it did damage the economy on the west side of Maui. And people, initially, for about a year, were told, ‘Don't go there.’”
“Well, we're sitting in Lahaina right now, right, so when they're saying don't go to Lahaina, they're saying don't go to my business. So that was very difficult, and we lost a lot of money in the first year after the fire.”
Valkirs added that since there’s been a change in messaging, he’s noticed that slowly, people have started coming back.
“I think it's more positive, like, ‘Please come back to Maui now. We're ready to receive you.’ And I think that's good, but there was a lot of damage done, and it's still not anywhere close to normal,” he said.
Valkirs said he is seeing low revenues, well below what he saw before the fire. He hopes that the county government can be more encouraging of local businesses.
“Revenue-wise, I would say that we're about 75% of what we were,” he told HPR. “And I've had to do all sorts of different things I never did before. I've started something I call the factory experience, where I take people into the factory, give them an hour-long experience, discuss how we make chocolate, and give them samples along the way, and that's been very successful, and it's bridged the gap a bit, but it's not quite there yet.”
“So I'm still losing money, is the point. I've been losing money for two years, so it's a little difficult to stomach that, and I didn't have a lot of reserve because of COVID to begin with.”
Valkirs, 73, shared that he’s been working 70 hours a week for the past five years.
While some of his staff did not return after the fires, others are faced with longer commute times because they’ve moved to the other side of the island.
“Everybody thinks Lahaina will again be a draw and draw people to this side, but that's five years to 10 years away,” Valkirs said. ”I think what has to be done is people have to come back because there are things to do here. They need to know about those things. They need to know that these businesses are suffering because the visitor and resident traffic isn't what it used to be, and you know, we need their help.”
This story aired on The Conversation on Aug. 8, 2025. The Conversation airs weekdays at 11 a.m. Hannah Kaʻiulani Coburn adapted this story for the web.
