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M. Matsumoto Grocery Store was established by founders Mamoru Matsumoto and Helen Momoyo (Ogi) Matsumoto on Feb. 13, 1951. It started as grocery store and eventually expanded to sell shave ice with homemade syrup.
Cascading with a rainbow of colors, the round frozen ice treat goes by different names: snow cones, snowballs and shaved ice. But in Hawaii, it is simply “shave ice” — and one of the most popular stores in Hawaii sells more than 1,000 of them a day.
In the North Shore town of Haleiwa on the island of Oahu, Matsumoto Shave Ice, with its beige storefront and orange-and-black sign, is as famous for its shave ice as the North Shore is for its surf. Now celebrating 72 years, the store has been owned and operated by three generations of the Matsumoto family.
But it wasn’t always smooth sailing, as second-generation owner Stanley Matsumoto shares with SFGATE. His father, Mamoru, who founded the Matsumotos’ store, never knew life without hard work.
Mamoru Matsumoto was born to Japanese parents on the island of Hawaii in 1908, but his family returned to Hiroshima, Japan, when he was a toddler. There, his family struggled financially. When Mamoru was 20 years old, he left Japan to go back to Hawaii to find jobs to support his family. He worked on the sugar plantation, on the railroad and as a store salesman, but it was his dream to own his own business.
Mamoru and Helen Matsumoto with their son, Stan Matsumoto, in front of the store in Haleiwa on the North Shore of Oahu.
In 1951, Mamoru opened a grocery store, M. Matsumoto Store Inc, previously owned by Kazuo Tanaka. It’s believed Tanaka introduced Mamoru to his future wife Helen; the couple would have three kids. It was also Tanaka who suggested the business shift from selling grocery items to shave ice, or kakigori, a Japanese treat introduced in Hawaii by 19th-century Japanese sugar plantation workers.
“I remember the very first time the shave ice machine came in,” Stan says. “I was 5 or 6 years old, and I was so fascinated, watching this hand-crank machine get set up.”
“You know, that one machine lasted long time,” he adds. “Back then, machines were built strong. The only thing we had to change was the motor.”
The image of his father always sharpening the machine’s blades with a sharpening stone is still fresh in Stan’s memory. “There’s a technique to sharpening blades,” he says. “Me, I’m lazy. I just buy blades already.”
When it opened, Matsumoto Shave Ice had 10 flavors, selling small cones of shave ice at 5 cents and large ones at 10 cents. Business picked up in the 1960s with the surfing boom, bringing transplants from the continental U.S. to Oahu’s North Shore to chase big waves.
The shave ice with five pieces of mochi, left, and the rainbow combo (strawberry, lemon and pineapple) with vanilla ice cream, right, are served at Matsumoto Shave Ice in Haleiwa on Oahu’s North Shore.
“We didn’t have money to spend on advertising, so it was all word of mouth,” Stan says. The little shave ice shop’s fame grew, as friends from the continental U.S. came to visit locals and then spread the word of where to go for the best shave ice on the island. “We just grind out every year. We just try our best,” Stan says.
Today, Matsumoto Shave Ice offers 33 flavors, including classics like strawberry, lemon, blue pineapple and banana. Visitors tend to order their shave ice without any extras, but locals and shave ice connoisseurs prefer it also with a scoop of ice cream, mochi balls, azuki beans and condensed milk. The more daring flavors are ramune (Japanese soda), yuzu (Japanese citrus), li hing mui (Chinese plum) and ume (Japanese plum).
“We now serve shave ice in bowls, but we get them old timers who want them in a cone, just like how we used to make them,” Stan says. “We tell them, you’re going to get a mess, but that’s the best — all melting and sticky everywhere.”
He says there are also customers who ask for a bowlful of all 33 flavors, but he won’t accommodate those requests — it’s impossible to taste any of the flavors at that point.
The Matsumoto Grocery Store as it looked in the 1950s.
Courtesy Matsumoto Shave IceThe store has long since moved away from selling canned goods, medicine and cigarettes (like it did in the 1980s). In 1976, it partnered with local designer HiLife to sell T-shirts, which have become vastly popular. When rent prices went up, the T-shirt sales kept the store afloat.
Another shave ice store, Aoki’s Shave Ice, is right across the street, but there is no rivalry. “I grew up with Michael Aoki. He’s one year older than me, and we learned how to surf together. I try not to do things like, oh, go check out another shave ice store and try their shave ice,” he laughs. “I just do my own thing.” He says he and Mike still talk story, often commiserating over the struggles of getting ice for the shave ice machine, and remain good friends.
After his parents passed away, of the three Matsumoto siblings, Stan was the one who took on the family business. He has his wife, Noriko, by his side and his daughter, Remy, too. “The two of them, they got better ideas than me,” he says. “I leave it up to the women. They get more talent than me.”
You can hear the love in Stan’s voice when he speaks about his father, Mamoru, and the family legacy he left behind. “My dad worked so hard. I always admire how he always saved money and never took trips. He was able to send money back home and even bought a home for his relatives in Japan. If he were alive today to see how the store is, he would be proud. He would be so proud of us,” he says.
One thing Stan promised his father was to never sell the store to a franchise, so don’t expect another Matsumoto store anytime soon. “Dad wanted us to keep it within family,” Stan says. “That’s a promise I made and plan to keep.”
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