Ishiharaya is a three-generation family business established in Waipahu during Hawaii’s plantation era.

Its familiar packages of tea cookies in various shapes and flavors, custom-made fortune cookies and gift sets are the company’s focus.

Tea-cookie baker Ira Ishihara left an airline career on the mainland in 2000 to continue the family business.

"I guess it was a sense of obligation," he said. "It was kind of a sad thing, all these mom-and-pops closing with nobody to take over, and I didn’t want this to be one of them."

Fourteen years later he is still at it, with the help of three employees.

The current location, makai of Farrington Highway just past Servco Toyota Waipahu, was built by Ira’s father, the late Hideo Dean Ishihara.

Ishihara is preparing to ramp up production for the holiday season, meaning more and longer days of baking and processing Ishiharaya Plantation Tea Cookies.

Founder Nobuo Ishihara, Ira Ishihara’s grandfather, came to Hawaii from Japan.

"He … started a confectionery and had a chuck wagon," said granddaughter Joy Ishihara Labrador, Ira Ishihara’s sister.

Grandmother Sasayo was a picture bride of sorts. "She came because their families (in Hiroshima) knew each other, and my grandfather needed a wife," so they sent her, Labrador said.

She joined him in the Waipahu candy and confections store, known for its popular azuki bean paste-filled "an pan."

When the building housing the store was condemned and demolished during the war, the business closed, and Nobuo Ishihara became a gardener.

Later he got back in the senbei business with a new store on Waipahu Street, and his wife kept it going for 10 years after his death in 1959.

The Ishihara family moved into its current location in 1978.

Ira Ishihara bakes cookies from three to four days a week for six to seven hours, unless he’s in holiday season mode when he bakes for six to seven days a week for "maybe 10 hours, or whatever it takes to have enough supply," he said.

The operation is small and is run old-school, which is why there’s no website and no shipping, Labrador said. "I just hate the fact that the shipping would cost more than the product itself," and there is no way to guarantee product quality, she said.

MINDING HER OWN BUSINESS

As someone who sews, Labrador was regularly in fabric stores, and one day a bolt of fabric generated one of those lightning-bolt thoughts.

"I came across a quilting fabric that looked like Spam. It was pink and kind of marbled, and I thought, ‘Hey, maybe I should do a Spam musubi (pillow),’" and she did.

She added pillows made to look like triangular ume musubi, pillows inspired by hand-rolled maki sushi and other food-inspired pillows for the resulting company, Side Order Pillows.

Her other company, Mo’ Bettah Bags, offers different styles and sizes of tote bags she makes.

The Japanese-themed bags bear a label saying, "Mottainai," which is Japanese for waste not, want not.

Bags she makes with Hawaiian print fabric urge users to "recycle, restore, reuse with Aloha."

WHERE TO BUY

Ishiharaya
94-101 Waipahu Depot St.
671-3175
Also at Diamond Head Market, Don Quijote, Marukai, Shimaya Shoten, Shirokiya, Wholesale Unlimited

Side Order Pillows, Mo’ Bettah Bags
www.etsy.com/shop/SideOrderPillows
Islandwide Christmas Crafts & Food Expo,
Blaisdell Center Exhibition Hall, Nov. 28-30

“Buy Local” runs on Aloha Fridays. Reach Erika Engle at 529-4303, erika@staradvertiser.com or on Twitter as @erikaengle.