Cafe humour lands where cutlery falls
A Taranaki cafe owner’s cupand-cutlery-tossing take on table service under alert level three has propelled her to online stardom.
In the viral video, posted on Oakura cafe Lemonwood Eatery’s Facebook page, Barbara Olsen-Henderson stands at a safe distance from mannequins seated at a table and tosses a tray of items at them while wearing a home-made surgical mask.
‘‘Most people have found it highly amusing. It amuses me still, just chucking those things – especially the cutlery. It was like a real Fawlty Towers moment,’’ she said.
‘‘There have been something like 84,000 views and it has reached a gazillion people; I couldn’t believe it.’’
The idea was inspired by a similar Dutch video, and by a conversation during an online meeting with some other Taranaki restaurateurs.
‘‘We were talking about how you could do contactless deliveries, and someone said: ‘You would have to serve burgers – something with a round shape so you could throw it.’ Then I saw the [Dutch] video and thought: ‘We could do that,’ ’’ she said. ‘‘I had to talk my husband into standing there with the phone. But once he saw it, he thought it was really funny.’’
Olsen-Henderson is feeling upbeat despite the prospect of being closed for at least another three weeks.
She said it would not be viable to reopen the cafe under level three restrictions, although she
Barbara Olsen-Henderson
‘‘I did that video to make people laugh.’’
will be delivering cafe-baked bread and donating the money from it to Hospice.
The lockdown has also given her time to think and plan. ‘‘I actually feel excited about how we spring out of this, refine and expand our business and I expect to be even more popular than ever,’’ she said. ‘‘That’s why I did that video to make people laugh and look forward with hope rather than to express a negative emotion that I’m not feeling.’’