Pie man still gets buzz being busy Kate back talking Kiwi
Once, customers waited over seven hours for a pie from Fairlie Bakehouse.
Queues at the popular bakery snaked out the door and down the street, with thousands of people stopping weekly at the cafe to gorge on its famous pies.
The bakery’s owner, Franz Lieber, said about 2000 pies are baked every day in the factory behind the store, but despite his success, the 63-year-old has no plans to slow down.
He works 14-hour days from 2am till 6pm, seven days a week, to prepare the cabinet’s plethora of baked goods – and said after all these years the job still puts a smile on his face.
Popular pie flavours – such as the best-selling pork belly with apple sauce and crackling, and the more unusual combination of bacon and salmon – were usually created ‘‘by accident’’ and kept around if they were a hit with the customers, he said.
On Easter Monday, the year’s busiest day, the store passed more than 3000 pies over the counter, about 200 every hour. Customers waited several hours for a pie, despite staff bagging takeaway goodies as fast as possible.
Lieber expected this year’s takings to exceed all others as it had been the ‘‘busiest year yet’’ and he was overwhelmed by the support the bakery received from customers.
The premises doubled in size during 2016 but ‘‘it’s never big enough . . . there’s only so much you can produce’’, he said.
The Bakehouse was named one of Canterbury’s fastest-growing businesses five years ago, when it had 13 fulltime and seven parttime workers. These days, he manages more than 50 employees.
The next step for the Austrian-born chef would be to open a butchery next door to sell the leftover meat fillets.
Lieber laughed off any suggestion he held the key to business success but said using quality, locallysourced ingredients was crucial. Beef rumps come from Kiwi-run Silver Fern Farms, bacon from Hellers in Christchurch, salmon from Timaru or Akaroa, and he used his own pastry recipe to make sure it was ‘‘light and fluffy’’.
‘‘It’s really not about the money, it’s about the buzz of doing it. I enjoy what I do,’’ Lieber said.
Timaru beautician Kate Talbott had to drop her Kiwi accent and slang to be understood as she worked on a cruise ship in places like Hawaii, Alaska, Panama and the Carribean for the past nine months.
Talbott, one of only two Kiwis among about 900 crew aboard the Carnival Legend, now finds the Kiwi accent weird to listen to.
To make herself understood easily by other staff members – mainly Indonesian, Indian, Colombian and Filipino – and the 2000 international passengers, whose first language was not English, she had to speak ‘‘proper English’’.
She said this meant diluting her Kiwi twang, avoiding colloquialisms and rounding her vowels.
She said she never realised how many slang words we used until then. Examples such as jandals, fizzy drinks, togs and hottie (hot water bottle) flummoxed other people.
After getting tired of having to explain everything she said, she just took up proper English as best as she could.
‘‘You don’t realise how many slang words we have and how we don’t speak full proper English so it was weird hearing all the slang again (back in New Zealand) which is our normal language.’’
Talbott’s career began with the completion of a certificate in beauty therapy at the Timaru Campus of Ara Institute of Canterbury in 2018, after which she spent a month of intense training in England learning the ionatherapy she would deliver on the Carnival Legend.
As one of 19 beauty therapists she had to sell the detox treatment she was offering to potential customers to keep the flow of work going.
The 13 and 14-hour days from 7.30am was hard work but unlike some of the other crew whose role was twofold she did not have to do any jobs.
‘‘For me it was about experiencing and seeing new places. It’s given me confidence.’’
One of the highlights was seeing a whale up close swimming with its baby in Alaskan waters.
Her next contract is in April on the Carnival Magic. In the meantime she is making the most of not working, sleeping in, and speaking in her natural Kiwi tongue.