“[The] response from the community has been absolutely amazing. We’ve been blown away by the amount of support that we’ve had.
“We’ve always had a strong presence with the community and love everybody here, so it’s overwhelming to know that they’re all waiting and anticipating us coming back.
After the fire in April. Photo / Alex Cairns
“We just want to let them know that we want to get back as quickly as they want us back.
“Unfortunately, we’ve had some serious delays due to landlord building insurance, which is totally out of our control...
“The building insurance works require a new roof, five new purlins that have been twisted and damaged due to the fire and a new firewall...Our internal fit-out team cannot start our works until after the building works [are] completed.
“I am confident that if building insurance quotes were accepted today, we would expect four weeks of building works followed by six weeks of fit-out works. Effectively, we’re 10 weeks away from whenever the contractor gets the approval of his quotes from insurance to start works.
“This has been the most challenging and frustrating part of the process as the acceptance from building works insurance has been out of our control, even though we’ve been making noises what feels like daily.
“What’s made it worse is that our insurance for fit-out works have been approved, yet we can’t start those until building works is approved and completed.
“We had a chat with the staff after the fire and obviously knew that we would potentially be out for a bit longer. As you peel back the roof, you start to see more and more damage to the extent where we’ve pretty much got to do a complete refit. All of our electrical and data wiring has been fried, smoke and water damaged furniture and fittings, internal ceiling replacement needed; the list goes on.”
Lawrence said when they realised what they were dealing with, they knew they had to come up with a plan for their staff.
“We’ve still got staff that we’re currently employing. We sympathise with them, because [they don’t know] the start date at the moment.
“I have quite a few friends and contacts within the hospitality area in the Bay of Plenty, and reached out to see if they had any temp/part-time work available for our crew, mainly to stop complacency creeping in and keeping them active while helping out another hospitality business that might need some help at the same time.
“They’re still getting paid from us, and then are getting paid [for] some part-time work as well from temporary employers around town.
“In the interim, my wife Mel and I have just recently bought a food truck, ‘Good to Go’. That’s something we’ve wanted to do for a while to extend our Good Local offering to events around the Bay, and now felt like the perfect opportunity while we have some down time.
“We have got approval from the body corporate to be able to trade [from] our food truck from the front two car parks outside Good Local from about July 10.
Good Local staff.
“We’ll have a small team of our staff together, cooking a limited Good Local menu for four nights a week from 4pm, Wednesday to Saturday. It will be great seeing our regulars again when this starts up.
“We’ve planned a charity event on July 5 and all our staff are going to be helping out for evening.
“All funds raised will go towards the Good Neighbour Youth and Development programme within their organisation.
“We’ve got 150 tickets to sell, of which 110 have already been sold. We’ll be having our chefs and Good Neighbour volunteers doing all the cooking and our service staff doing all the serving.
“We’ve got a Latin DJ with some fantastic beats for our Caribbean-inspired event. So, lots of cocktails and dancing and just letting your hair down in the middle of winter while supporting a fantastic cause. That’s at the Cargo Shed on July 5 from 6pm.”
The company had come together to help each other through these times.
“These guys have been working for me for years.
“Some of them have been here since day one seven years ago. They’re like family. They’re an extension of us,” Lawrence said.
“I think it’s a reflection of them as characters - wanting to stick around, waiting for us to come back and supporting us whichever way they can, and a credit to us as well by utilising their skills in the community.
“We are confident that once we come back, we’ll be better than ever, and we can’t wait to start serving our locals again.”
“If you want tickets for the July 5 event, which is going to be absolutely amazing, please head to the Good Neighbour or Good Local Facebook page, click the link and buy tickets now.”
