A taste for business

LIVING THE FOODIE DREAM

The Bay’s smorgasbord of emerging food offerings creates a perfect mix of businesses that not only make great food but also dish up some fantastic stories to boot.

WORDS MONIQUE BALVERT-O’CONNOR PHOTOS VARUN CHAUHAN + SUPPLIED

When it comes to Bay of Plenty foodie success stories, there are many tasty morsels to choose from, with great yarns to share. Avenue Pizza started dishing out pizza from a tenpin bowling venue, while the Pepper & Me founder must alert NZ Post when she has a promotion on – so they can prepare for the product onslaught. UNO introduces you to a man who’s just nuts about nuts, as well as a business wiped out by lockdown. But there’s a silver lining, thanks to New Zealanders’ love of pudding.

All are doing great things and have more ideas on the boiler. Like Matt Gillon whose business unashamedly deals in the decadent. Dessert lovers really need to keep Pudding in the Bay, so this talented baker can fulfil his next business dream.

“I’d love to one day have a dessert bar with cocktails and music. I’m imagining warm brownie with a scoop of homemade icecream on top and a cocktail to match. It would be a nice place for adults to hang out.”

You reckon? Bring it on, we say!

AVENUE PIZZA

The voice and the guitar strumming are being given a rest as the pizza flipping has taken over. Jo Thompson and his wife spent years travelling around New Zealand and Europe as musical duo Joseph and Maia, before returning to Tauranga to start a family, and thrill the tastebuds of pizza lovers. “I found my hometown was seriously lacking in the pizza I’d seen scattered around the world. I started teaching myself to make it (with many failed attempts) and got a bit obsessed.” His business partner, Tom Davidson, jumped in with his decade of pizza experience and the two started honing what evolved into Avenue Pizza, which opened at Tauranga’s tenpin bowling establishment in 2018. Late last year Avenue Squared opened at 103 Maunganui Road with plans to also re-establish in Tauranga before winter. The two believe having a naturally leavened sourdough product sets them apart – “more of a challenge, but it yields a better result”. “It’s fun to hone a craft using old techniques, to be part of something that starts from just flour and water but develops into delicious food,” says Jo. Their meatball pizza is most loved by regulars, and for Jo and Tom it’s the simple and classic Margherita. Avenue Squared offers Detroit-style pizza. Cooked in square tin pans the crust is fluffy (more like focaccia bread). When Avenue Pizza reopens in a Tauranga CBD location, it will offer the same round pizzas of the tenpin bowling venue days. Be ready to be bowled over though, as this pizza duo is into “refining”. “We want to push the quality as far as we can,” Jo says.

AVENUEPIZZA

PUDDING

New Zealand’s first Covid-19 lockdown was “brutal” for Matt Gillon’s boutique kombucha-making business, so he got baking.

The second lockdown had the opposite effect – a booming new business, thanks to the brewery becoming a bakery. Matt’s chocolate brownie and its white chocolate blondie counterpart quickly gained fame.

“I thought, ‘Let’s give a straight-to-the-customer service a whirl’.”

He created Pudding, set up a website, put it up on Facebook and Insta and “it went mental”.

“Some days, during lockdown, I was sending out 70 to 80 boxes of brownie a day, all over the country (a surprising number went to the South Island too),” tells Matt, whose family and friends helped with slicing and packaging when he got “slammed”.

“There were really long hours. I started with a regular oven that was on 18/20 hours a day and I was going to bed at four or five in the morning.” Things have quietened since lockdown (still plenty of business though).

A foodie all his working life, Matt started out at Bethlehem’s iconic Somerset Cottage and did his chef training. He has an engineering degree too, “but missed the food”.

He bakes all his product, working with a basic recipe that he modifies.

His product is available online and at select coffee carts (Piccola Espresso, Nitrous Coffee Bar). While Pudding is brownie and blondie focussed, cookies also come out of Matt’s oven, and he’s been known to make impressive wedding cakes.

Overall public favourite? Milk caramel and chocolate brownie; with raspberry and white chocolate blondie close behind. Some are “supremely naughty,” he grins.

“Basically, I like producing really high-quality food that’s bad for you, but delicious. Pudding is the fulfilment of this dream.”

PUDDINGS.NZ

PEPPER & ME

Little did Cherie Metcalfe know that helping friends with lactating issues would lead to the birth of a booming business.

People were making lactation cookies and Cherie thought she’d instead put the likes of fenugreek seeds and fennel into a salt. And so, it started and soared.

“It worked really well, and I moved from that to making spices for the general market.”

Today Cherie’s Pepper & Me business (named after her first-born) offers 45 products, many with quirky names (Italian Stallion, The Aioli Grail, Saucy Tart Tartare). Man Grind is the best seller, followed closely by Sesh Oil.

Cherie’s favourite is Za’taar.

“It has a really nice Middle Eastern flavour that’s not too intense. It’s great with lamb, chicken and veges too. Flatbreads, dips, hummus, wraps and pita are my favourite foods right now and Za’taar works perfectly with them.”

Pepper & Me is stocked in about 130 stores nationwide, including New World. Equally as busy as the wholesale market are online sales. And Cherie has her own store in Tauriko now (her knife range and recipe book can be found there too).

Success stories are all the better if they’ve come from humble beginnings and such is Cherie’s case. This chef is pleased the days of cooking mince and making jam sandwiches at an early childcare centre, in order to make ends meet, are long gone.

She is living the dream.

“I am completely and utterly obsessed with food, the endless creative possibilities that presents, and the joy it brings to people.”

Always up for a challenge, she says the next one may be a dispatch centre in Australia.

PEPPERANDME.CO.NZ

SMALL BATCH

“I’m like a pig in mud in this business,” says Nick Parker, who’s just celebrated at year at the helm of Small Batch.

Nut butters and spreads are happily batch-crafted for serious flavour at his Mount Maunganui base. Cashew, hazelnut and peanut butters, to be exact, and streichcreme. On the day UNO visits, Nick’s lunchbox indicates he’ll be feasting on sandwiches spread with streichcreme (Tuscan with Roasted Red Peppers this time).

As many satisfied customers already know, streichcreme is a combination of sunflower seeds, cashew nuts and eggplant flavoured four different ways. As well as the Tuscan option, there’s Mediterranean Olive, Garlic and Garden Herb, and Roasted Beetroot and Ginger.

“Described as a vegan paté, it ticks lots of boxes as its high in magnesium and vitamin E, it’s gluten free and delicious,” Nick says. The majority of Small Batch customers are crushing on Super Butter, however. Full of peanut, almond, cashew, brazil nut, chia seeds and flax seeds, it’s little wonder it boasts a five-star health rating.

Nick - a career chef, who says he’s a “sold-out foodie, ruined for anything else” – says there’s room in the market for his “wonderfully fresh”, batch-crafted product. His competitors are of the size that requires production outsourcing, which comes with the risk of losing artisan control.

It’s a business that’s developing. Thanks to joint ventures with local artisans there’s other tempters such as Choc Peanut Butter and Honey Peanut Butter.

In a nutshell… Small Batch deals in product that tastes great and is a wholesome dietary option. it’s sold online and, in many quality, artisan stores countrywide

SMALLBATCH.CO.NZ