Ask a longtime Waikoloa Village resident where the Foodland is, and you'll probably get a small, knowing laugh. Not because there isn't one coming. Because there's always been one coming. The supermarket has been the named anchor of Waikoloa Plaza since before the shopping center broke ground, and it has stayed the answer to "not yet" through a groundbreaking, a grand opening, a second wave of tenants, and multiple rounds of local business reporting that keep using the word "expected." Meanwhile, on Saturday mornings, actual food has been changing hands at the Waikoloa Stables the entire time, run by a nonprofit, priced by small farmers, and paid for in cash at a folding table.
That's the part worth sitting with if you already live here. The plaza's official retail plan and the village's actual food supply have been running on two different clocks, and the informal one got there first.
The Anchor That Hasn't Opened
Waikoloa Plaza sits on 45 acres just east of Queen Kaʻahumanu Highway, about five miles inland from the coast, and it opened in July 2023 after planning that started back in 2017. That's the timeline reported by Building Industry Hawaii, which put the shopping center at roughly 135,000 square feet once complete. Foodland was the intended anchor from the start, alongside Ace Hardware.
By February 2025, a year and a half after the plaza's general opening, the Hawaii Tribune-Herald reported that Foodland still had no announced opening date, even as a bank, a gas station, and several dining spots had already filled in around it. Around the same time, developer Gary Pinkston told the Kona-Kohala Chamber of Commerce that a burger spot called Smash Daddy's 808 had just opened, with a Popeyes and a Brazilian steakhouse concept still in the pipeline. That's the last confirmed word on the anchor's timeline. More than three years after the plaza's general opening, the space with Foodland's name on it is still, as far as the public record shows, waiting.
That's not a knock on the developer. Big-box grocery buildouts take time, and the plaza has clearly been filling in around its anchor rather than waiting on it, with two hotel projects, a Candlewood Suites and a Holiday Inn Express, penciled in for 2027 and 2028. The point is narrower and more useful if you live in the village: the thing everyone keeps waiting for hasn't been the thing feeding the neighborhood. Something else has.
What's Already Feeding the Village
The Weekly Farmstand
While Foodland's move-in date kept sliding, a nonprofit called Waikōloa Grows started running something much smaller and much more regular: a weekly Farmstand at the Waikoloa Stables, stocked with produce, eggs, meat, cheese, bread, and plants sourced directly from island growers. Crysta Costa sells her honey there under the name Hāmākua Creations. "Everyone in the village loves our honey," she told Big Island Now earlier this year. Jeff McCall sends rhubarb over from his farm in Volcano, a crop that needs cooler upcountry temperatures the coast doesn't have, and it isn't the Farmstand's biggest seller, but he keeps sending it anyway because a market that pays attention to what a farmer is trying to grow is worth showing up for.
Waikōloa Grows is also in the process of applying to accept SNAP and EBT at the Farmstand, which would put fresh, locally grown food within reach of more households in the village on a weekly basis, not just a monthly one. That's the kind of infrastructure a shopping center anchor tenant doesn't build. A community market does.
The First Saturday Market
Once a month, the same Stables location hosts something bigger: the Waikōloa Community Market, drawing more than 40 vendors selling produce, plants, eggs, fish, baked goods, artisan foods, jewelry, crafts, and live music, typically running from morning into early afternoon on the first Saturday. There's a community tent now too, used for chef demonstrations, keiki activities, and presentations from local nonprofits, which turns a shopping trip into something closer to a standing neighborhood appointment.
None of this required a 45-acre commercial site or a national grocery brand. It required a folding table, a mailing list, and enough Saturdays in a row for people to start planning around it.
Grocery Shelf Math
Here's the part that actually matters if you live in the village and have watched this play out in real time: none of your grocery options changed while Foodland's opening kept slipping. KTA Super Stores has stayed the default full-service grocery run for most households here, Foodland delay or not. The Farmstand and the monthly market picked up the slack that a single supermarket, even a busy one, always leaves on the table, especially for fresh produce and small-batch goods that a chain store doesn't stock.
So when Foodland does open, whenever that turns out to be, it will be additive. A second full grocery option within a short drive is a genuine convenience. It is not, and never was, the thing standing between village residents and dinner. That gap got filled from underneath, by people who didn't wait for a permit to clear.
Why the Hotels Are the Last Domino, Not the First
The resort side of the plaza's build-out belongs in this picture too, because it clarifies what kind of growth this actually is. The Holiday Inn Express is targeted for 2027, and the Candlewood Suites isn't expected until 2028, both trailing years behind the retail and dining tenants that have already opened around them. If Waikoloa Village's growth story were primarily about tourism, the hotels would have led. Instead, the sequence has been hardware store, gas station, dining spots, and a slow trickle of everyday retail, with the visitor-facing pieces scheduled last.
That ordering tells you something about who this stretch of development is actually for right now. It's for the people who already live here and drive past the half-finished plaza on the way to Costco runs or coffee, not for a wave of incoming guests who haven't checked in yet.
The Village Fed Itself First
None of this is an argument against Foodland showing up eventually, or against the plaza filling in the way developments do, slowly and then all at once. It's a reminder that the village didn't sit around waiting for that to happen. The Farmstand runs every week. The Community Market runs every first Saturday. KTA has been there the whole time. A nonprofit board found a way to bring SNAP benefits to a produce table before a supermarket chain found a way to open its doors.
If you've lived in Waikoloa Village for a while, you already knew some version of this. You've probably bought honey from Costa or rhubarb you didn't know you wanted from McCall. The shape of the whole picture is the point: the plan on paper moved slower than the market that showed up without one.
If you're weighing a move within the village, thinking about what a property near this stretch of Waikoloa Road is actually worth to you day to day, or just curious how the plaza's next phase might change your routine, Missy Elliott knows this corner of the island from the ground up. Let's connect.
