A pioneer of Chch coffee
‘‘You could smell the coffee roasting down Cashel St.’’ Trevor Smith’s daughter Jennie Coffey
It is hard to imagine a New Zealand before the obsession with coffee. Wellington reportedly has more cafes per capita than New York and the aroma of roasting coffee beans wafts across Christchurch from myriad companies, mining the rich seam of black gold.
But before the tulip cups and varietals, Christchurch man Trevor Smith was roasting coffee on an imported Italian roaster out the back of his Cashel St store Browne and Heaton, a pioneer of a now booming industry.
For years, caffeine-hungry Cantabrians came to Smith’s tea and coffee store to pick up their beans, both whole and ground.
Percolator coffee was all the rage, and people of all walks of life came through Smith’s door in search of their fix.
He carried on the store, which also sold Ceylon tea, Cuban cigars, Indian curry and other exotic imports, from his father. While he was working as a store assistant, the original store owner died of a heart attack and he bought the business.
His daughter Jennie Coffey held fond memories of visiting her father’s store.
‘‘I remember going down there on the weekend and playing on the mountains of coffee sacks,’’ she said.
‘‘You could smell the coffee roasting down Cashel St.’’
Smith sold the business in the late 1980s, with the coffee-roasting aspects bought by Robert Harris to expand its South Island empire.
His son Bernard Smith continued the family’s coffee legacy in the form of Vivace Coffee in 1997 because he ‘‘missed the coffee’’.
Smith continued to be interested in the industry until after his 90th birthday.
‘‘He would come in and do the odd job here and there,’’ Bernard said.
At his well-attended 90th birthday party at Addington Lifestyle Care Hospital, the keen public speaker gave an impromptu speech.
‘‘He was really mentally tough, really he was,’’ Bernard said.
In the end, Jennie said, ‘‘it was heart failure, and he just faded away’’.
Trevor Lancelot Smith was born on September 12, 1926 in Christchurch to Thomas (Lance) and Ruby Smith.
He finished his schooling at St Andrews College and took a job at stock firm New Zealand Loan and Mercantile before joining his father at Browne and Heaton.
Smith was interviewed in 2015 for Remembering Christchurch: Voices from Decades Past, a book compiled by Alison Parr. In it, Smith described the early days of coffee in the Garden City.
‘‘I remember quite vividly we sold coffee for 11 pence for a quarter of a pound. That would be 1945,’’ he said.
‘‘The beans were coming from mainly Africa. I had an agent in Tanzania and he came out two or three times and we’d buy it by the tonne.’’
Their coffee was originally roasted by the New Zealand Coffee and Spice Company, and Smith would regularly watch his beans being roasted.
‘‘They had a bloke there – I remember his name was Curly – and I would watch him roasting our coffee beans and got to learn how to roast.’’
A roaster was imported from Italy, at the time no mean feat, and arrived in the 1950s. Smith became the first independent coffee roaster in Christchurch.
‘‘It was more or less hit and miss. You just had to get it right and you had to wait for the crackle. Listen for the crackle.’’
A series of store assistants were employed at Browne and Heaton, one of whom was Anne Dunne, to whom Smith took a particular shining.
They were married at Addington Catholic Church in January 1948 and went on to have four children – Rosemary in 1948, Jennifer in 1949, Lawrence in 1953 and Bernard in 1959.
In his eulogy, Bernard said Vivace coffee would not have become a reality without his father.
‘‘Trevor worked very hard during his career . . . Even after he retired, he was always fascinated with my business, Vivace, which I could not have been able to start without his support.
He said his father contributed to many community projects through Jaycees, and was a proud member of the Canterbury Club.
‘‘He noticeably mellowed in the last few years, however, and demonstrated more openly his true love for his family.
‘‘When our mother was ill, Trevor was very caring and attentive. After she died he was determined to maintain his independence.’’
He died on March 8 and a service was held for him at St Matthews Catholic Church on March 14. More than 200 people attended.
Smith will be remembered as a trailblazer in an industry New Zealand has become well known for, a pioneer and a family man.