Pursuits: Brian Bigornia Pours A Shot of Joy With Panday Coffee

A former nurse finds his true calling running his own Filipino-themed coffee cart.

November 1, 2025

Mari Taketa,

Photo: Aaron K. Yoshino

“Is it the look in your eyes, or is it this dancing juice?”

Amid the clothing and empanada tents on the lawn of Thomas Jefferson Elementary School, someone is belting out Bruno Mars on the sound system. He’s good, too: Leaning back on an ice chest, Brian Bigornia opens his arms toward the vendors and tourists at the Sunday Aloha Market Waikīkī. “Who cares, baby?” he croons at them. “I think I wanna marry you.”

He’s not the hired entertainment. Bigornia owns Panday Coffee, a mobile operation he launched late last year after quitting his job as a nurse in Seattle. Panday is the dream he nurtured through 12-hour shifts in an intensive care unit. “Working the nights away, I couldn’t help but feel like I was dying a very slow death,” he’d write in June, five years later, on Instagram. Even after moving to a day shift in the ICU, the emptiness persisted.

“The truth?” Bigornia wrote. “When you’re working in something that’s inauthentic to you, it doesn’t matter how many adjustments you try to make. I was constantly shifting—trying to fit into what I thought I should be doing. But I wasn’t listening to the quiet voice underneath asking: ‘Is this really for me?’”

What was really for him, he realized, was working for himself. Seattle had given Sacramento-born Bigornia an appreciation of coffee. A neighborhood café he frequented—that served Brazilian food and coffee made from Brazilian beans to a diverse crowd that liked to hang out—gave him the idea for his business. It would be a café that celebrated his own Filipino culture. But first, he’d start with a coffee cart.

Bigornia was deep into his new education—watching YouTube tutorials by coffee gurus, devouring coffee manuals, familiarizing himself with beans and roasts, studying the processes at different cafés—when divorce hit. After that, he moved to O‘ahu, where he’d always wanted to live, and opened Panday.

At his tent, the lull is over. Monkey Coffy, his signature drink featuring house-made banana milk (the equivalent of two bananas per glass, Bigornia says), sells out. So does Biko, the espresso mixed with coconut condensed milk and rice milk he also makes. His Pandan Latte finishes with an umami-rich hit of the tropical leaf he simmers into a syrup.

Now, there’s a midday rush. Bigornia scribbles an order, weighs the grounds for an espresso shot, adds his house-made syrups, grabs oat milk from the ice chest, stirs in ice and rinses a glass with the efficiency of a former nurse. He picks up the microphone. “Jacob. Your latte is ready, Jacob,” he tells the market.