Business Spotlight: Patrick’s Cafe & Bakery

Step into Patrick’s Cafe & Bakery in White Center and you’re instantly wrapped in the warm spirit of aloha—and maybe the scent of haupia cinnamon rolls. Owner Patrick may have started his career in swanky hotel kitchens and global corporate roles, but his heart (and hands) have always been in baking. Now celebrating nearly a decade of bringing tropical treats and local love to Seattle, Patrick’s is more than a bakery—it’s a slice of Hawaii and community.

This interview has been edited for brevity and clarity.

Aloha, this is Patrick. Welcome to Patricks Cafe & Bakery in White Center.

How long has Patrick’s Cafe and Bakery been open?

I’ve been open almost 10 years and I started in Rainier Beach. I had a small little bakery next to the Stonehouse Cafe, and I was there for a couple years and I needed to expand my business so I found this cute little house here in White Center and so we moved here, where we’ve been for 7 years.

Congratulations on almost reaching 10 years. How did you get started?

I come from a family of four and we were born and raised in the food business. So all of our family back home in Hawaii. All of us were born and raised in the kitchen. My mom owned a cafe and my dad owned a grocery store. I being the youngest of the four kids, my mom told me I should go and learn how to bake. So I’m the baker of the family. Baking is my passion and I’ve done that throughout my career.When I left the corporate world, I decided, well, maybe I will pursue my passion. So as long as I can bake and I can bake fresh every day, I’m a happy camper.

I have lived many lives in the corporate world. I started my career in baking with the Marriott Corporation as a pastry chef in hotels. My first hotel was the LAX Marriott in Los Angeles. I was there for six months and they were just preparing me to be the opening pastry chef of their first hotel in Hawaii – the Maui Marriott. That was my first real big gig. I stayed with Marriott for 18 years.

The last 12 years with Marriott, I was at the corporate office in Washington, D.C. I became the corporate baker and I ran the J.W. Marriott Baking School at headquarters. We would bring all of the bakers in from all over the world and they would spend two weeks in Washington to go over some of the standards, such as my Danish. Which is how I got my job with Marriott. Mr. Marriott loved my Danish.

From there, I went on my own and moved to Boston to do consulting work. I stayed there a couple of years and then I was recruited by Starbucks. I opened the first seven Asian countries for Starbucks as their international director of food and beverage. So, my job was just food. I had nothing to do with the coffee part. I just had to go to these different countries and try to figure out how we were going to get scones and muffins and croissants into these bakeries. A lot of those countries didn’t even know what a scone was. So, it was a very fun and challenging experience.

From there, I came back to a different division of Marriott, which was HMS Host and they did airport operations. I stayed with them for almost 10 years, and then they retired my position. I came here to Seattle because I had some friends opening up a restaurant. I came up to help them for two years, then I decided I’m just going to open my own bakery.

So when a first time customer comes in today, what should they order? What do you recommend?

I’m only doing the food that I know that I grew up with. If it’s your first time, I always recommend the loco moco. That’s really popular back home. It’s a hamburger patty, but we do different versions of it. We do it with spam, we do it with Portuguese sausage. Sometimes when I have a meatloaf sandwich going, I will do a meatloaf loco moco. But that’s the standard. And it’s eggs, any style eggs and is smothered in gravy. It’s all about the gravy. If you don’t have a good gravy, you don’t have a good loco moco. So that would be the hearty meal that I would recommend.

If you want a light snack, the spam musubi is very popular on the go. And of course, my Danish and my cinnamon rolls, the haupia macadamia nut is my specialty. My cakes are popular. I do all the island tropicals, the guava, the passion fruit, the coconut haupia and chantilly. My pineapple scones are the most popular. My scones are picking up a life of their own. And I’m glad that people come and enjoy my scones. So those would be my recommendations.

So, I was first introduced to you when I picked up some of the cookies that available at Uwajimaya. Tell me a little bit about those.

I was hoping that my Lilikoi Shortbread would be my ticket to retirement, but… I’m working on it. It’s growing. I do have it at Uwajimaya, Hawaii General Store, The Fish Guys, Ohana Kitchen in Burien and Iron Pot in Kent. It’s all about the shortbread. Really, it’s a shortbread cookie, but… everybody has a shortbread cookie recipe, just like everybody has a chocolate chip cookie recipe. But mine’s a little crispy butter cookie. We glaze it with Lilikoi, which is a passionfruit glaze. We use the straight juice and we make a glaze with it. It’s a lot of work, but it’s a bag of goodies. Hopefully, this cookie will help me retire!

So what are some of the things that you like the most about running your own shop?

The people. My customers and my workers. Without my workers, I can’t do this. My assistant, she’s been with me since the beginning. I recruited her and all her friends from Rainier Beach High School in their junior year. So I’ve seen them graduate from high school. And I’ve seen most of them graduate from college. Only one of them is still with me, and that’s my assistant. One of the students’ mom still works for me. So they’ve been with me for, like, almost ten years. Everyone else has been here over five years, so I’m grateful. I’m grateful for who I have. Small team, but I can depend on them, and I can’t do it without them. So that is a blessing, and I’m grateful for that.

Also, my customers. I love all of you. They are the best. I have a following. I have customers who do volunteer work for me. I have one volunteer who’s been doing it for eight years. So I love my customers. This is like my home. I want them to feel like they’re in my house, and I just want to welcome them. I just wish I had more seating inside. But I do have a lot of seating outside, weather permitting, and we have trees to provide shade, too.

I always like to ask small business owners what other small businesses they like to support either in the neighborhood, in the greater Seattle area.

Yeah, I definitely like to support small business. Of course, I support all my clients.

So Ohana Kitchen in Burien. Iron Pot in Kent. Seattle Fish Guys. Here in the White Center area, I support Young’s Restaurant. And Puffy Pandy. Macadons, which used to be here. But I know Michael real well and he’s awesome. But he’s out in Renton now. Lariat Bar here is an interesting bar. Oh, and Can Bar. Can Bar is great food.

Intentionalist is all about spending like it matters. Can you talk a little bit about why this is important to you?

People don’t realize that the small business might be small, but as a group of small businesses, we hold up to all the big conglomerates. People don’t realize that if you don’t support a small business, it’s hard to be sustainable. You always see small businesses closing all the time, especially in these days and times, it’s really hard because product cost is up, minimum wage is up.

When you have four or five employees like I do, that makes a big impact. So then you have to be creative in what you’re going to do to offset those kind of costs. We still need the traffic flow and we need the business so that we can sustain. We don’t have any of the cushions that the larger or even smaller chains, you know, or franchisees that may have two or three businesses, they have more of a chance of surviving.

We’re just one. I only have one location. I only can afford to have one location right now. I’d like it to be different, but, you know, so that’s why we need people to support us.

I do small batches, so everything’s fresh. Wverything in my bakery case is baked fresh every morning. We’re coming in at 5 and 6 in the morning. We’re getting everything ready for 8 o’clock. So everything is fresh baked, and that’s kind of my shtick. We bake throughout the day. So if scones run out, we bake more scones. Cinnamon rolls run out, danish runs out, we bake more.

We do have a hard time raising our prices. Everybody has to do what they have to do to survive. And, you know, I have people challenging me as a small business, like, “Well, I only got $15 for lunch. What can I get for $15?” And then when you tell them you can get maybe a sandwich or salad and a drink and, you know, a little dessert, they’re like, “Oh, we want more.” Because they think we’re small, that we can get talked out of. That happens more than people realize, that small businesses always get whittled down. And if you’re not a good negotiator, you’re just giving your business away. And it’s really sad, and I think people should understand that just because we’re a small business, we shouldn’t be pushed over on pricing or bargains or even donations.

Donations is really a huge thing. And, yes, I want to help all of my community, schools. And so I have made a rule for myself that I would do everything five-mile radius of my business. But, you know, I’ll get requests from Everett, from Vancouver. They don’t even support my business, but they want a donation. I just don’t understand that.

Let’s talk about coffee!

We’re in a coffee capital world and I started with espresso, but I just couldn’t maintain the right help for that, because that’s a whole business in itself. I’m hoping in the near future that I will bring it back as a separate entity, because we are in Seattle.

I wanted to offer a coffee in the Seattle area that people don’t have access to, but it was a Washington roaster, and so I went through a lot of companies and I ended up with Fidago out of Bellingham. I love their coffee. There’s not too many places that serve their coffee. Because it’s far away, people don’t have access to it, right, other than you can buy the retail beans at PCC, but here, I’m cheaper here than PCC.

What else would you like people to know about Patrick’s Cafe & Bakery?

Well, first of all, I love this community. I’m located in White Center, by the way, and the way I tell people, I’m really easy to find. It’s not that hard. I’m between the airport and downtown. I’m right in the middle. And so there’s a lot of people from Hawaii, when they’re flying back, they buy all my lilikoi cookies and stop here because it’s on their way to the airport. So I am literally eight miles from the airport and eight miles to the wharf downtown, right in the middle.

I love this community. I have an artist, a sketcher. She donates free art for people to take if they want, and she comes and replenishes it. But the community here has been very, very supportive.

I am open only four days a week: Friday, Saturday, Sunday and Monday. However, we do catering and we do cake orders seven days a week. If you ever need a cake or catering done, it’s available seven days a week and you can get that online.

What I want people to take away from here is that the spirit of Aloha. I am from Hawaii. I am part Hawaiian. My mom was half Hawaiian, half German and my dad was Chinese. And if you want a taste of Hawaii, that’s what I do here. It’s not fancy food. It’s just good home cooking. And if you’re missing food from the islands, I make fresh lau laus every Friday and I will do Hawaiian plates. Just all your lovely, lovely island foods. People say when they come here, they feel like they’re in Hawaii. That’s what I want people to feel. And of course, my bakery items, haupia cinnamon roll and the pineapple scones. Aloha!