Imua Coffee Roasters

wholesome, delicious, and vegan. great coffee! great baked goods!p banana bread is perfect, not too sweet, great texture and is gluten free!

I really want to like this place, and I think it has potential but... Things that I enjoy about it: The patio is cute, and the interior is hip. The coffee is solid, and the music has been great during my visits. And it's vegan so bonus points for that, especially on an island that basically has Beyond Burgers as their only vegan option. Finally, the staff is very sweet. Things that are frustrating: The staff is also inexperienced and seemingly unable to multi-task. I waited ten minutes the other day for a drip coffee because the couple in front of me in line ordered coffee drinks and food. On another afternoon, I also saw a line of 12 people, and the mayhem that followed. They are also out of things constantly/perpetually. I've tried to buy a piece of chocolate banana bread every day for six days because the person in front of me bought the last piece during my first visit, but they have been out every day since (I show up every day at around seven in the morning so they don't sell out before I arrive.) They have also been out of the "lox" all week, and they're completely aware of it--the owner was there yesterday and said ,"That's the second person who tried to order it. I guess I should make some more." Do I even need to comment on how maddening it is when you're out still the next day and you know? Create a menu that you can maintain (I owned a French bakery/cafe for five years so trust me on this. You will irritate customers if you are always out of menu items. It's better to revamp it if you can't keep up.) Things that are unspeakable: There's been a recent trend everywhere to combine vegan and gluten free diets, despite the fact that it does great disservice to both diets and is probably relevant to only .001 of the population. Gluten baked goods need dairy and eggs for moisture, flavor, and body to be enjoyable. Vegan baked goods need gluten and all the help that they can get. This is an unholy arranged business marriage that hopes to capitalize on desperation and is lose-lose for everyone. The results are a bagel shaped thing that imitates cardboard pretending to be bagel. I really wish this place nothing but success. And if I visit Kauai again, I will stop in again and again, probably to find that they're still out of chocolate banana bread and "lox". Godspeed, my vegan brethren.