Lei shops in Chinatown, Honolulu

If you are buying lei in Honolulu and you are not at the airport, this is where you go. The shops cluster along Maunakea Street and spill around the corner onto North Beretania and Pauahi, several of them within a single block, and walking the row is the fastest way to compare what is strung and ready today against what has to be ordered.

They are small storefronts rather than florists in the mainland sense: a cooler, a rail of finished lei, and someone stringing at a table behind the counter. Because they sit so close together, availability shifts between them day to day, and a flower one shop has run out of is often two doors down. That is the practical argument for coming in person rather than ringing one number.

A few things are worth knowing before you go. Several shops open early and close by mid-afternoon, so this is a morning errand. Parking on Maunakea itself is difficult and mostly metered; the surrounding blocks and the municipal lots are the usual answer. And for anything that has to be made rather than picked off the rail, particularly maile or a haku, call ahead: the shops here are used to same-day walk-ins for common flowers and to advance orders for everything else.

The listings below are compiled from each shop's own site where it has one, and from public directories where it does not. Where a shop posts no hours, this page leaves the hours blank rather than guessing them.