Rush to chill out in hot Bay
Ice cream, a fan and a trip to the beach — Hawke’s Bay residents have been stocking up on the hot day essentials as the mercury stays around 30C.
Hot temperatures have led to such a demand for ice cream and cold drinks that some businesses have had to turn customers away.
Havelock North McDonald’s ran out of soft serve ice cream and milkshakes on Wednesday evening, forcing customers to look elsewhere.
The manager of Rush Munro’s in Hastings, Jess MacLeod, said that during the last week, staff had been dishing out an average of 1200 scoops of ice cream a day.
“Our busiest days have been New Year’s Eve and New Year’s Day. The flavour we seem to be running out of the most is Feijoa, people always tend to over-order on chocolate, but feijoa is the favourite.”
MacLeod said the average waiting time for customers during the busy season could be up to 25 minutes.
“We can only have a couple of people scooping at a time, but we do get really long lines of people, sometimes it goes out the gate and on to the footpath.”
Owner of the Mr Whippy Hawke’s Bay branch, Peter Fogarty, said that although the season started off a little quiet with the rain, they’re now back into the full swing of things. “There was a truck down at Waimarama beach yesterday and staff were completely run off their feet.”
While ice cream was a must-have for many, portable swimming pools and fans had also been flying out the door of hardware stores.
A staff member at Wairoa’s Hammer Hardware said temperatures had been sweltering and customers had been purchasing items best suited to cooling themselves down.
While today’s temperatures were looking to be a little cooler, the sunshine and searing temperatures are going to stick around with highs of up to 28C next week.