Alright – so today we’ve got the honor of introducing you to Kalvin Nutt . We think you’ll enjoy our conversation, we’ve shared it below.

Alright, Kalvin thanks for taking the time to share your stories and insights with us today. What’s the backstory behind how you came up with the idea for your business?

I have served in the military and was station in Hawaii for 4 years. I would always mention to my wife how much I love Hawaii and always wanted to go back. As this is like a song that I always sing or say to my wife, that I really wanted to go back to Hawaii or relocate to work or retire if we can.

My wife Sofia is always having a passion working with people and wanted to have her own business. Not knowingly she took that seriously about Hawaii, and she started to look for a business that will originate in Hawaii as it will be an easy for her to convince me and say yes to her business idea.

Upon her research and discovered L& L Hawaiian Barbecue. Then my wife asked, ” how would you like to go to Hawaii for 3 weeks?” and I said, “I am in!!!, when are we going?” and then I came to know it is a trap!

She pitched the idea like a shark tank, of applying for a franchise as Charleston, SC has diverse food but nothing that you can find a comfort food from Hawaii. We started exploring different local restaurant in our area that claim to be “Hawaiian food” and all but a decor and poke menu which is a Japanese food that was introduce in Hawaii but not local Hawiian food.

We drove over 200 miles to Jacksonville, Florida, Concord, North Carolina, and Chesapeake,VA to visit the nearest L&L Hawaiian Barbecue. We both want to try the food if this is something we want to be represented and not just buy the business. We both believe, we need to love what we are selling. After several visits to each location, and research within Charleston, SC on how much population of local Hawaiian, Polynesians in the low country, made our decision to bring L&L Hawaiian Barbecue so Hawaii will just be a bite away in Charleston, SC. That was year 2018.

We could have been opened 4 years ago and it was postponed as we’ve decided to take care of our Mother, a breast cancer survivor and we got hit by Covid and recently our Mother passed away due to Covid last April 2022.

As we went back to start the business again, January 2022 we have announced in Facebook “coming soon” and it hit 65,000 views within few days of posting it and later grew to over 25,000 views in google and currently has over 1,700 followers.

We are getting tons of private message in Facebook from our potential customers saying THANK YOU for opening L&L Hawaiian Barbecue. They have missed home and bringing them to the low country is the only one they can have next to their home.

We have customers, donating photos from Hawaii and some items from Hawaii that we will display at our store. The love and support we get from our customer even when we are not open yet, it does inspire us to keep going to any obstacle that we are having in the construction of our building.

We will be the first to bring the taste of the island and the first to open in the State of South Carolina. We are coming soon January 2023 / We would like to introduce the Hawaiian Culture in as much as we can by offering some classes like how to make Hawaiian leis and Hula Class.

As our customer awaits. we already have booking for catering, birthday party as well as book signing event.

And if anyone ask any franchisor “why you open L&L Hawaiian Barbecue?” most people we have met will say, they knew it when they were in Hawaii and we missed it and there’s none in our area so we open one here. For us we have different story on that as my wife always says ” It’s my husband’s fault, I am tired of him saying he wants to go Hawaii” so I find him a piece of Hawaii.”

As we are military family, we want to share with our customers who served our country to be in the Land of the Free and Home of the Brave. Anyone can submit a photo in their Military uniform to be featured in our military wall of honor as our way of saying THANK YOU FOR YOUR SERVICE. We provide free coffee to all retired Military and active members of Military as all first responders with no purchase required.

The small idea become a great success from the feedback we got from our customers that we didn’t expect how a great impact to the low country of bringing L& L Hawaiian Barbecue in the low country. To all our customers we want to cheers with you as how local Hawaiian says CHEEHOO!!! and MAHALO NUI LAU (means thank you very much)

Great, appreciate you sharing that with us. Before we ask you to share more of your insights, can you take a moment to introduce yourself and how you got to where you are today to our readers

South Carolina franchise owners are Kalvin E Nutt and Sofia V. Buenviaje-Nutt of Charleston, SC Kalvin, an Army veteran, served 20 years in the military and now works at Boeing SC in quality assurance. Sofia, originally from Manila Philippines migrated in USA 2007 and recently left her job as a cashier monitor in Global Financing Disbursing with the U.S. State Department to concentrate on the new restaurant

Can you share a story from your journey that illustrates your resilience?

Starting a business is not an easy task. There are lots of challenges that will test your drive to keep moving forward. You will experience that no one will ever have the same level of passion and expectation to reach our goal.
This happens to us when we hired the wrong people and cost the delay of our grand opening.

Money always help to start a business, however the attitude of how you handle the money, the stress and embrace the unexpected change is the key to make it work.

with the challenges we faced , it did bring a lot of stress in our business and in our relationship as a husband and wife. We didn’t let this stop us to keep moving forward.

We know how this stress to both of us, and we have decided to step back for a weekend vacation and to recharge ourselves that results to build more strong bonding and recharge our minds, our relationship and our motivation was improved.

Take a break, freeze or step back, to whatever you may call is a good call. It will help to have clarity of where to move next of how to reach the goal. Self-care is important as one of the top priorities to reach your goal.

Any insights you can share with us about how you built up your social media presence?

My wife Sofia did all the marketing for the Social Media

I (Sofia) started joining different type of groups in Facebook in order to know my community as well as started helping others by sharing my comments to any question posted that I maybe able to help. From Military Mom, asking which is best school which is great community to live in Charleston, while other are private groups that was created for people to share where they want to eat and one of them was chucktown foodies, Charleston eats, Fun things to do in Charleston, just to name a few.

When you joined the group as a goal to know your community and to help others, that lead me to have a great social media presence.

As I have established the social media group connection, I created my own Facebook Page to introduce our restaurant as coming soon while we are under construction . So one night I’ve decided to post our flyer sometime in January 2022 and went to bed, the next day I was shock I got 65,000 views and non stop sharing my post.

I was over the top feeling and say OMG! what did I do? Thats how it confirmed that my research is right that having L&L Hawaiian Barbecue will be a success. Since then it keep growing and now we are over 1700 followers in Facebook, over 25,000 views in Google.

My messenger got flooded of When are you opening? Are you going to have the full menu of L&L ? Can I buy the gift card for my Mom who now lives in Charleston, SC., Thank you for opening L &L our family will be happy and will be there almost everyday.

The funny part when I created the Google page, you have to register by your cellphone for verification code. After finishing the page and wanted to change the phone , Google has a strict rule that they wil mail me the code and have to wait for few days before I can change the number.
The next day I am getting calls for order, booking party event and other catering events.

I kept my interaction with our customers and when we went to Hawaii for training, I have posted the photo of the first store in Hawaii, it got thousand view and great comments of ” Oh I remember that place, I always go there” IT brings back childhood memories. You can feel each one of them how they miss home.

I feel like we are a heroes to all our customers as they kept saying “Thank you for opening L&L, we do miss home and having them in Charleston, will able to have a taste of the island.

We are overwhelmed of love and I realize that my small idea to please my husband and have a small business for us was not just the only goal I have accomplished. We touch someone’s heart and make them happy to have a piece of home that we brought to Charleston, SC that makes it Hawaii is just a bite away.

To make sure we can accommodate all , in our upcoming grand opening, I have imagine, how can we handle right if those 65,000 viewers will come at the same time. That is more than a capacity of Darlington raceway. which can only seats up to 47,000.

We want to serve them right and not get upset as the line is too long and the food taking long.
So I have created a “secret” message to those who have first sent me a message and invited them to a Pre Soft opening by invitation only. In two days of sending a message I was able to get 247 seats reserve for ONE DAY that are willing to buy a gift card just to be the FIRST to have the taste of L & L Hawaiian Barbecue.

From the original plan of having 1 day Pre Soft opening, it will now be one week then the following week will be the Grand opening.

Contact Info:

• Website: https://www.hawaiianbarbecue.com/locations/northcharleston/
• Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/llnorthcharleston/
• Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/MAHALONORTHCHARLESTON
• Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/in/ll-hawaiian-barbecue-north-charleston-sc-ab4242230/
• Yelp: https://www.yelp.com/biz/l-and-l-hawaiian-barbecue-north-charleston

Image Credits
no image credit I owned all the photos.