Icecream seller’s 45-year love affair

Many people profess to love icecream, but few can claim as lasting a love affair with the treat as Colin Haines.

He opened Royal Oak’s American-style icecreamery and diner, Ollies, on Valentine’s Day 1973, and — 45 years later — his love remains undimmed.

He still daily dishes out scoops to Auckland’s icecream lovers, with the main change being that many customers are now the grandkids of his original clients.

It’s also a love affair that has captured the hearts of his family.

His son Matthew found true love at Ollies after meeting his future wife there when they worked at the store as teenagers.

“It means I can even credit Ollies with giving me grandchildren,” Haines said.

He said Ollies continued to appeal to Aucklanders so many years later not just because people “simply love icecream”, but also because of its sense of nostalgia and deep roots in the community.

Yet, by contrast, its initial success came from being a trendsetter as it rode the new wave of American culture sweeping Auckland in the 1970s.

Haines and his wife had earlier lived in Canada where they admired American-style diners, before returning to Auckland where he took a job with the Royal Oak KFC restaurant that opened in 1971.

It was the famous fast-food chain’s first store in New Zealand and one of its busiest openings anywhere in the world up to that point, according to Haines.

“I know, I was in the kitchen cooking the chicken,” he said.

After a stint managing and opening new KFC stores across Auckland, Haines returned to Royal Oak and found a drapery shop for sale.

Forty-five years on, Ollies still runs from the same store and has changed little.

It still stocks Tip Top icecreams, although the number of flavours has grown from 12 to about 30.

People keep telling Haines “don’t change the store, keep it as is”.

Its roots in the community are still strong, with local students even now often finding their first after-school jobs there.

Haines talks of one woman who first worked at Ollies in the 1980s as a teenager.

Since then, all five of her children have worked there with her last daughter leaving Ollies in February to start university in Wellington.