Creaming it by grabbing a tiny opportunity by the horns

Opinion

Iconsidered writing about the tiny prime ministerial gift Jacinda Ardern delivered this week, but that’s her business. And everyone else is doing it anyway.

So I want to tell you about two small-town battlers who refused to give up when their tiny cafe in Sanson, a couple of hours’ drive north of Wellington, was facing a slow death.

Viv’s Kitchen is a typical smalltown cafe: all the things you’d expect in the pie warmer, sandwiches like any other place and a mix-mash of everything else as decor.

Sanson is a tiny place, built around a T-intersection, famous for nothing except the unfortunate infamy of being known for a murder taking place there decades ago. At least I’m sure it was Sanson. Anyway, enough about Sanson’s attributes, I only have 700 words.

So it was 2013 and I took a road trip around New Zealand, broadcasting my RadioLIVE Drive programme from a different town each day. Life on the road is not healthy, a few beers here leads to a steak and cheese pie there, which happened to be Viv’s Kitchen, Sanson.

I had no idea what was about to happen.

As I demolished the pie I introduced myself, said what I did, and immediately Viv’s guard went up. I don’t blame her.

I was carrying a mean-looking device that recorded people’s voices. She probably thought I was with the Inland Revenue Eradication Unit and had stopped in to put her business out of its misery.

She muttered something – I don’t think it was an offer of another pie. I pushed on and through her suspicions and asked how’s business? Not great, we’re over it, she said, and continued saying: ‘‘Can’t see us being here much longer.’’

Besides, next door the word on the street was, Sanson would soon be home to a new business of working girls and Viv and Kevan thought, bugger that.

And then I asked what they did differently to every other place selling the obvious and Viv mentioned something about a horn. I said, excuse me, what? I hadn’t heard her correctly and had wondered if she was still talking about the working girls.

But no, she was talking about the hardest workers in the town, in a place that is pretty unforgiving and doesn’t do fancy.

Viv and Kevan Withers, sitting in his stubbies in the middle of winter, proceeded to tell me about the cream horns on the menu, a pastry shaped horn filled with a cow-sized serving of fresh cream.

If you wanted to take a risk, some were flavoured. Viv told me she sold four a day on average, and sometimes sold six or seven. All up, a great day was making just short of $30.

I have always been one to say yes to an opportunity and that night took about a minute to tell the Viv’s Kitchen story on RadioLIVE Drive.

Viv said thanks. I wasn’t from the IRD after all. Then she rang again and again and again the following week. Something was happening. The cream horns had developed legs and were walking out the door. Within a month they were selling 20 a day, then 30, 50, 70, 187.

They woke up fast and stared opportunity squarely between the eyes. Then grabbed it by the horns. They used every hour of every day to hold on to this remarkable reaction.

They advertised, claimed to be the home of cream-horn tourism, made it in the top-10 list of things to do in Manawatu¯ ; they invested their time, their money, the bank’s money and every ounce of blood, sweat, tears and fears they had.

They kept in touch with me and gave me regular updates. The highs and lows of tourism via Viv’s grapevine are known now as a cream horn.

There’s so much cream in one of these little wraps, Fonterra now makes record profits, as does Air NZ, which clearly flies people in for the tourism experience.

But most of all the credit should go to Viv and Kevan. The cafe is now in a bigger building, they hire truckloads of locals, they all wear corporate kit and this week they sold their 100,000th cream horn.

They got a tiny opportunity presented to them and then hit it out of the park. They have had their first holiday in a decade and I now call them friends.

In my time of need they got in touch. When I needed to be defended in public, Viv jumped in boots ’n’ all. Opportunity, loyalty, work ethic – these guys have all that and some. Congrats.