I had retired in 2019, and the following year my oldest daughter, Harriet, and her family returned to New Zealand from the United States during Covid and got caught in the lockdown. Harriet was heavily pregnant with baby number two and didn’t fancy returning to the US, and I’m always looking for something to keep me busy, so when we learnt a local coffee roastery – Havoc Coffee – was for sale we decided to give it a go.
I’ve always loved coffee, but I wouldn’t say I was a connoisseur when we took over the business. We had to learn to roast, so we kept it very quiet while we experimented for the first few months. I have a science background, so that helped me understand what was happening inside the bean during the roasting process, and I think that because I love cooking, I just took to it. I’m an intuitive cook – I like to invent and add things, tasting as I go. When you’re roasting coffee, you use all your senses to achieve the end result – you listen for cracks in the bean, you watch for changes and, of course, you go by aroma.
When we got a handle on roasting, we expanded the business, tripling output and incorporating cost saving and environmental measures like recycled packaging and installing a large solar array to power the roastery and charge our electric car. We now supply private customers, local businesses, and New World and Four Square supermarkets. And we sell at the Saturday markets.
I had quite a varied career before the roastery, starting as a medical technologist in Wellington and then enjoying a stint in radio marketing. My most recent and fulfilling job was as international student director at Whanganui Collegiate School. The highlights of that role were growing the number of students and the relationships our family formed with them. As it was a seven-day boarding school, the students, who mostly came from Asia, stayed the whole term and were placed with families for school holidays. We hosted lots of students over the years, so I’ve been “mum” to many. It’s been great to see the kids grow, and for Whanganui to welcome other cultures.
As a family, we’re very community minded and I think sport played a role in that. My three daughters, Harriet, 36, Kate, 35, and Esther, 32, played netball, so I took up coaching. And they all rowed, something I did socially at uni. I think sport teaches important lessons like teamwork, sportsmanship and resilience. We travelled the world with our daughters’ rowing, and they have certainly built pathways in their lives through sport.
When the children were young, we ran our orchard, Austin Pears, exporting to Europe and the US, but we stopped exporting because we didn’t like the wastage caused by such a heavily regulated industry. We were dropping perfectly good fruit on the ground that could have been sold in New Zealand, so we started at the farmers’ markets.
We supplied sixteen markets between Wellington and Auckland, with stalls run by family or family friends. We’d send a truckload up to our chiller in Auckland, and the family would pick them up Friday night ready for the market on Saturday. We got quite a good reputation for our Doyenné du Comice dessert pears, which were tree-ripened and favoured for their exceptional flavour and texture. We now concentrate on our local Whanganui River Markets and two roadside stalls.
The pears complement the coffee business. I roast two to three times a week, starting at eight in the morning and finishing around lunchtime. On Fridays I prepare for the market, but just about every day I’m packing orders to be sent all over the country, from Te Ānau to the Bay of Islands. We grind to order and for the market, so it’s always fresh.
We have a close relationship with our agents, who source quality beans from Central and South America, Papua New Guinea, Ethiopia and Sumatra. We put a lot of trust in them to ensure a consistent quality coffee that is ethically sourced. They maintain the relationship with the farmers and are an integral part of the supply chain, as they provide a pathway for the farmers to access premium markets at fairer pricing compared to local markets.
Harriet and I love working together. I do the majority of the roasting, and she sees to marketing and admin. With two young children and a full-time job she’s pretty busy, but it’s great to have a backup and we love having family in Whanganui and being able to spend time with the grandchildren.
Havoc Coffee sources specialty beans from around the world for their award-winning Whanganui roastery. To find out more, visit havoccoffee.co.nz.
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