Tucked into a cozy spot on South Puʻunēnē Avenue, Maika’i Market is dishing out hope and bringing the community together.
“Coming here every day, it's more than work. For me, it's like coming home. A little piece of home, away from home,” said Dalilha Rodrigues of Lahaina, known as Aunty Dee, owner of Dee’s Poi Mochi food truck.
“When the fire happened, it did take our trailer, it took our location,” she said. “And I honestly I wasn't even planning on reopening. We were severely underinsured," she said.
Rodrigues was overwhelmed with gratitude when two companies she’d never heard of gifted them a brand new, purple 16-foot food truck.
“We never in our wildest dreams ever thought that someone would come up to us and say, 'Hey, we want to help you.' We're always [those] people. We want to help other people," she said.
Rodrigues sells sweets and gives away smiles.
“I like it because everybody leaves happy. You cannot... be mad when you come up to a dessert truck. And if you are mad, by the time we leave, you smile,” she laughed.
Starlet and Clint Joao of Moloka’i launched Maikaʻi Market, featuring more than 20 vendors from Maui and Molokaʻi. They’ve lived on Maui since 2021, and specialize in selling the famed Molokaʻi Hot Bread.
“We had a little dream of how we wanted to start a food truck park,” Starlet Joao explained.
She said their dream turned into a brick-and-mortar location, called Simply Local, which is the foundation of the market. They opened up to food truck vendors shortly before the August wildfires.
“After the fire happened, we got flooded with phone calls from a lot of different Lahaina businesses to be able to open up their food truck here,” she said. “And now I can say six out of the seven trucks were in Lahaina or supposed to be in Lahaina and either lost their home [or] business or both.”
Surrounding comfortable seating areas are iconic Lahaina food trucks like West Side Boba, along with Thai food, sushi and other local favorites.
“Everyone here is locally owned and operated,” Joao said. “And there's different small businesses in here [Simply Local shop], from clothing to apparel to snacks, even woodwork. … So a little bit of everything.”
Heather English of Aloha Made Shave Ice said her truck was scheduled to open in Lahaina in mid-August. After the truck survived the fire, her truck's debut shifted plans to Maikaʻi Market in February.
“It's like really heartfelt, you know, because everybody's been through so much,” she said. “It's crazy. I mean, most of these people here have lost their food trucks, their houses, just everything. And here they are, every day showing up, talking to everybody, serving everybody else.”
Joao said it’s all about community.
“I just want to thank the community for supporting us because it's not always easy to support local,” she said. “That's why we're here. So we're really thankful.”
Rodrigues wants to return to Lahaina — the birthplace of her kids, as well as her business — in the future. But for now, she’s found her place.
“Maikaʻi Market is more than just a market … because these trucks, these businesses — they were all our neighbors, and we relocated out here to Central Maui. It's hard, you miss home, it’s 23 miles that way,” Rodrigues said, pointing toward Lahaina.
“For me, I can say we still grieving, we still lost, you know. But every day it gets a little easier. And coming here to Maika’i Market is part of our healing process.”
Rodrigues takes it one smile at a time.
“One smile a day just helps us get through. Knowing that we can make somebody else happy, on the other side of that window,” she said.
