Orepuki farm-to-table cafe seeking eager gardeners
Penny Sonnenburg and Brian McGrath are keen to welcome travellers back to Orepuki, but with a few requirements — only if you’re keeping safe and bonus points if you’re keen to get your hands dirty.
The couple run Orepuki Beach Cafe, a farm-to-plate restaurant that is one of only two hospitality venues in the tiny town of Orepuki, about a 50-minute drive from Invercargill.
All ingredients in the cafe’s meals are sourced from gardens behind the venue or the couple’s 20-acre farm, including their own meats.
‘‘We practise regenerative farming . . . which is low inputs, restoring waterways . . . we don’t have to use fertiliser or nitrates. So we keep pretty busy focusing on our backyard,’’ McGrath said.
The cafe doesn’t advertise, instead relying on word of mouth to attract visitors from all across the South Island – which means customers are usually unaware their meal was grown only a few metres away.
‘‘We don’t make a big noise about it. We advertised way back when we first started, but then all you could think about was how many blue cod meals you’d need to sell to make it back. We’re pretty big in Southland now, it’s [Orepuki] a whole getaway area,’’ he said.
Before Covid-19 they would regularly utilise ‘woofers’, backpackers who work and live on the farm, to harvest their gardens, but now the couple – who also double as the establishment’s chefs – are spending an increasing amount of time harvesting produce – and their staff are getting in on it too.
‘‘I’m the main gardener, but everyone’s involved now . . . it gets them into a different environment, the staff really like it . . . but we only send them out when it’s sunny,’’ he laughed.
Business has been down a little in recent weeks, but McGrath didn’t believe they had struggled in comparison to some venues, with trade being steady throughout the remainder of the pandemic.
Slightly lower customer numbers had allowed staff to be moved between the garden and cafe more easily, although the couple were looking forward to having more time to work on their farm once more staff were available.
Whilst McGrath was keen to welcome tourists back, he also wanted to reiterate the importance of keeping safe and limiting unnecessary exposure during the peak of the Omicron wave in Southland.