Maui’s Coconut’s Fish Cafe looking to open a Sacramento restaurant
Pacific Business News
Maui’s Coconut’s Fish Cafe owner Michael Phillips is searching for a new restaurant location in his hometown of Sacramento, California.
The full-time Maui resident has had plans to expand his business to Sacramento for a while and is now reviewing applications for interested peoperties in several neighboring areas, including Rocklin, Roseville, El Dorado Hills and Folsom.
“It’s pretty exciting,” Phillips’ daughter, Frances Oney, told PBN on Friday. “This is where I grew up and where a lot of my family still is, so we love to be in this community. We’re very excited about the prospect of being in Sacramento and the greater Sacramento area — we already have a lot of fans here, so that’s a good plus.”
The new location, which would be owned by the Coconut’s Fish Cafe corporate office, could open as early as the end of this year or the beginning of next year.
“I think it would be a great fit here because you have people who are familiar with Hawaii and want to have a little taste of their vacation right in their own backyard,” said Oney, who lives in Rocklin and helps to run the company with Phillips and her husband, Daniel Oney. “We also have a health-conscious seafood concept, and you have a lot of communities here, where people are looking for a fast, casual and healthy meal that is still affordable for their family.”
Phillips, who retired to Maui at the age of 40 and opened up Coconut’s Fish Cafe six years ago in Kihei, opened his first licensed restaurant in Scottsdale, Arizona, in 2013, and has a Mainland headquarters in Reno, Nevada.
The company, named after Phillips’ cat, Coconut, signed a franchising deal in February with Plano-based Desert Stream Restaurant Group to open eight restaurants in Texas — four in Dallas, and four in Austin. Two Texas locations in Dallas and Plano have opened so far this year.
In addition to opening the company-owned restaurant in Sacramento, Oney said they are looking for franchisees and want to open a corporate cafe that would serve as an employee training center.
Plans are also in place, she added, to have three to four franchise locations open within the next three to four years.
“I’m really excited for the growth of the brand and the opportunity that really all of California presents, but Sacramento clearly holds a special place in our hearts as well as the Bay Area, because we have close family ties there,” Oney said.
Though plans are in place to open restaurants in the Bay Area and Los Angeles later this year, Oney said she and her family are “still trying to nail down some locations there.”
“We’re looking at both markets very actively,” Oney said.