Bizia Surf and Coffee Bar recently opened in Wahiawa, selling surfboards made from albizia trees, along with coffee drinks.
Located in the Wahiawa Industrial Center, the surf and coffee shop, which has two part-time employees, held its grand opening on May 13, after a soft opening in December, said Christine Johnson, a co-owner and operations manager for the business.
The shop's other owners include Johnson's husband, Joey Valenti, and Eric Bello of Bello's Millwork.
The shop plans to add a third employee in June, with plans to hire additional baristas with surf experience, she said.
Representatives of Bizia Surf declined to share the build-out costs of the store.
"We started working with invasive albizia lumber about seven years ago, and our goal has always been to utilize as much lumber as possible in order to prevent it from going to the landfill and being dumped and mulched," Johnson said. "There's a lot of benefits to capturing our waste streams [while] living on an island and being so import-dependent, so that's always been our driving mission. When we started making surfboards, we knew we wanted to open up a surfboard shop and show room, so the community could see that capturing invasive albizia logs and making a scalable wood product for our economy — and for our state — is a worthwhile endeavor and that it is feasible."
Albizia trees are native to the Maluku Islands in Papua New Guinea and were brought to Hawaii about 100 years ago as a "quick fix" to prevent soil erosion due to logging and farming, she said.
"On the scale of — I don't know, bad to worse, I guess, as far as forestry goes — albizia is a better problem to have than erosion," Johnson said. "Unfortunately, it's a very expensive problem to manage now."
The shop works with local landowners who have properties with albizia trees, and about a dozen arborist teams that can remove the trees, which can be up to six feet in diameter and 100-feet tall, she said.
The surfboard showroom also includes a coffee bar. Johnson added the coffee shop element because she wanted to create an "elevated shopping experience," she said.
"And I also have a partner that's an avid surfer, and I know how long it takes for him to look at surfboards sometimes," Johnson said with a laugh. "So I started thinking through, 'what is the customer experience for those looking for surfboards and also those not looking for surfboards who just want to come in and see what we're doing? How else can we engage with our brand?' "
Bizia Surf and Coffee Bar is open from 8:30 a.m. to 4:30 p.m. Monday through Friday at 401 N. Cane St., A2, in Wahiawa. For more information, visit biziasurf.com.
