The newly renovated Kauai Shores, in Kapaa will be adding the Lava Lava Beach Club to their property. The first location was opened in Waikoloa nearly four years ago.
Lava Lava Beach Club Operations Director Nick Roschi said the new 250-seat restaurant will occupy an estimated 4,000 square feet in the former Kauai Sands Hotel, which was rebranded as Kauai Shores, an Aqua hotel last year after Honolulu-based Aqua Hospitality completed a $10 million renovation.
"We're going to mimic the model that we have in Waikoloa, so it's going to have a very similar menu," said Roschi (Source: Pacific Business News). "The only difference is that this Lava Lava Beach Club won't have the lodging aspect to it."
The Kapaa restaurant will employ approximately 100 people and offer a fusion of American and Hawaii regional cuisine featuring locally sourced products, Roschi said. He said the choice to open a Lava Lava Beach Club on Kauai was based on the hotel's prime location near the beach on the Royal Coconut Coast.
"Since we formed the leadership team that we have, we decided that we wanted to move in a direction of growth," Roschi said. "The concept itself is very site-specific, hence the name, so it really requires a very special place — a beachfront location where there's a lot of open space — and that location totally fits the bill. The other half of it is that there's nothing else like it on Kauai, so we're very excited to provide something that doesn't really exist there."
The owner’s of the hotel helped to incentivize Lava Lava Beach Club through their partnership. "The owners of the hotel were very gracious with providing incentive funds to get this project going," Roschi said. "They put all of the money into the build-out, so the cost to us wasn't a whole lot. It's a partnership, and one of the big parts about doing stuff like this is creating relationships with them. They're just as excited as we are to get this open, so it's going to be a win-win for us, for them, and hopefully for Kauai."