Hello, Tall Poppy Syndrome

In a city that doesn’t warm easily to outsiders, Amie Richardson has found a new arrival who has captured the hearts of locals. It helps that he makes terrific coffee.

If Christchurch asks what school you went to, then Dunedin wants to know how long you’ve been here. It’s not asking in a casual so-you’re-new-to-town kind of way, it’s suspicious. It wants you to prove your place, like a blind date where one party is clearly the more interested. Dunedin’s not going to sell itself to you. You tell me why I want you here?

We’re wary of outsiders. It took me two years before I was considered “local” enough to get a client in the city – despite returning to the place I had lived half my life. Once I was in, I was in. The prodigal daughter had returned.

But then along comes Jayren Dixon. An Aucklander who brings his flashy Auckland coffee to Princes St in Dunedin and starts brewing it, just down the road from Dunedin roasters, the cheek!

There was suspicion at first. Who is this guy with his frozen flat whites made in a slushy machine, blasting tunes and cutting moves? Show pony. Tall poppy.

But something about Jay and his Daily Coffee Co. strikes a chord with Dunedin locals that most newcomers take years to elicit.

It helps that he consistently makes the best cup of coffee in town (and Dunedin has a lot of great coffee), that he remembers your name, your kids’ names, the last story you shared with him, and your drink of

choice. It also helps that he brought his beautiful family with him – including his wife (a secondary school teacher), two kids and a husky that answers to the name Mocha – fully ensconcing himself into Dunedin’s social fabrics. How’s that for an entrance.

But more than that, when you go to Jay’s, it’s like stepping into a real-life coffee-drinking version of Cheers. Inside, we get to feel part of something special, a community created by a shared love of drinking coffee.

So instead of asking to be accepted by us, Jay has flipped the script: he’s given us something we didn’t know we were missing. Once, twice, sometimes even three times a day, we take a break from work, share stories, have a laugh with Jay and emerge all the better for it.

And we repay him with intense loyalty – his regulars spread the word like fanatics. We even take our cups into his kitchen and rinse them ourselves. Why? Because we want to show him we care about him and his coffee shop and that we’re glad he’s here...

Just don’t call yourself a local.