Leonard’s Bakery closed its Kapahulu store on September 14 for renovations, and the official notice says the company is currently planning to reopen on September 26. Five Malasadamobile trucks cover the gap. We do not rent a car in Hawaii, so we went down that list the way a Waikiki-based visitor has to — and four of the five are a dedicated drive to a suburban shopping center. The fifth is parked in the industrial strip just outside the airport, which turns out to be the whole story.
What happened
The notice sits at the top of Leonard’s own site under a heading that reads, in full, “NOTICE: Upcoming Kapahulu Bakery Temporary Closure.” The wording is short: “Our Kapahulu bakery will be temporarily closed for renovations beginning September 14, 2026. We are currently planning to reopen on September 26.” It then points customers to the mobile locations at Waikele, Pearlridge, Airport–Lagoon Drive, Koko Marina and Windward Mall.
Two things the notice does not do. It does not describe the work, and it does not promise the date — “currently planning” is carrying real weight in that sentence. hawaii-ne.com, a Japanese-language Hawaii news site, flagged the closure on September 12 and reported that the job covers the bakery’s backyard and other areas, citing the bakery’s own social post. We could not find that detail anywhere on the official site, so treat it as reported rather than confirmed.
The Kapahulu store is at 933 Kapahulu Avenue, up the avenue from the zoo end of Waikiki, and its normal hours are daily 5:30 a.m. to 7 p.m. If the work runs to plan, the counter there is dark for twelve days.
What it changes for a Waikiki stay
Here is the full replacement list, straight off the official locations page, checked September 14, 2026 Hawaii time.
| Malasadamobile | Address | Hours on the official list |
|---|---|---|
| Airport – Lagoon Drive | 540 Lagoon Drive, Honolulu | 7 a.m.–6 p.m. daily |
| Waikele Shopping Center | 94 Lumiaina St., Waipahu | not listed |
| Pearlridge Shopping Center | 98-1005 Moanalua Rd., Aiea | not listed |
| Koko Marina Shopping Center | 7190 Kalanianaole Hwy., Honolulu (Hawaii Kai) | not listed |
| Windward Mall | Haiku Rd. at Kamehameha Hwy., Kaneohe | not listed |
Read that last column twice. Leonard’s publishes hours for exactly one of the five trucks. The other four give you an address and nothing else — a strange thing to learn after driving to Waipahu.
Geography does the rest of the sorting. Waikele is out past Pearl Harbor, Pearlridge is in Aiea, Koko Marina is at the southeast end of the island, and Windward Mall is on the other side of the Koʻolau range. From a Waikiki hotel room, each of those is a trip you take for its own sake.
The Lagoon Drive truck is different, and not because it is closer. It is different because you are already going there. 540 Lagoon Drive is in the industrial strip just outside Honolulu’s airport. Beat of Hawaii described it in February 2026 as sitting in a parking area near Hawaii National Bank, calling it a five-minute detour from HNL against a 20-plus-minute drive to Kapahulu. It is outside the terminal and outside security, so it is no help once you are through the checkpoint. It works on the drive in from the rental counter, or on the drive back to return the car.
The one warning on record does not come from Leonard’s. A reader commenting on that same Beat of Hawaii article wrote: “there is no parking for the Malasada truck. This is a very busy industrial area and on the new bus line.” That is one reader’s account rather than the company’s, and it sits awkwardly next to the article’s own description of the truck in a parking area near Hawaii National Bank. Either way, it is the sort of thing an official locations page will never tell you, so plan the stop as “one of us stays with the car” rather than “we’ll park and take our time.”
Lagoon Drive is also the only truck with published hours: 7 a.m. to 6 p.m., every day. For a mainland arrival, that covers both ends of a trip.
What we would do — and what we wouldn’t
Nothing about our own days changes. Kapahulu Avenue past the zoo already sits outside the circle we actually walk, which is Waikiki plus Ala Moana, and a closure does not move that line one block. We are not going to pretend a store we do not walk to has inconvenienced us.
If we were driving — we are not — the call would be easy: Lagoon Drive on arrival day, on the way in, before the suitcase ever reaches the room, with one of us staying with the car given what that reader wrote about parking. Not the mall trucks. A fresh malasada does not improve over a round trip to Aiea with the bag cooling on the passenger seat — and that is before the unpublished hours.
For a reader without a car, our honest answer is to wait. None of those four is somewhere we would spend a Waikiki morning reaching by bus, and twelve days goes by fast. If you want something sweet you can walk to in the meantime, two options sit inside Waikiki. Waikiki Market at 2380 Kūhiō Ave., which reopened on August 25, was set to carry mochi malasadas — Aloha State Daily listed ube, yuzu lilikoʻi and strawberry lemonade matcha among the flavors. Those are a different thing from a Leonard’s malasada, and we have not tried them. The other is the Liliha Bakery counter at Waikiki Beach Walk, where the Coco Puff was $3.75 on the menu we read on September 1; we have had one from the Ala Moana counter and neither of us put it down half-finished, which is not how most pastries go with us.
That is the honest scale of this. Pastry is simply not a category we shop in; most weeks nothing sweet gets bought at all. The exception we make is one sweet thing in the morning on a trip, split between us, with the coffee we make in the room. One pastry, one morning, at a store we were not walking to anyway.
Before you plan around this
September 26 is a plan, not a promise. Renovation schedules slip, and the notice says “currently planning” rather than “will.” If your trip runs through the last week of September and a Kapahulu morning is on it, check the site the night before instead of turning up at 5:30 a.m. on faith.
The four trucks without published hours are the other soft spot. An address is not a schedule. Ask before a long drive, because the official locations page will not answer that question for you.
Everything above comes from Leonard’s own site and locations page, read on September 14, 2026 Hawaii time — day one of the closure. The five-minute-detour figure is Beat of Hawaii’s from February 2026, not the company’s, and the no-parking line is a reader’s comment on that article rather than anything either the site or Leonard’s has published. The backyard detail comes from that September 12 report, not from the notice itself.
Details
- Leonard’s Bakery, 933 Kapahulu Ave., Honolulu. Normal hours daily 5:30 a.m.–7 p.m. Closed for renovation from September 14, 2026; reopening currently planned for September 26.
- Malasadamobile, Airport – Lagoon Drive: 540 Lagoon Drive, Honolulu. 7 a.m.–6 p.m. daily — the only mobile location with hours on the official list.
- Current status and the full location list: leonardshawaii.com.
If you have a rental car and an early flight, the airport truck was arguably the better Leonard’s stop before any of this started. The closure just makes it the obvious one.
