Cafe's origin proves to be most useful

Origin Earth owners Joanie and Richard Williams love to frequent cafes and now they own one. Amy Shanks talks to Joanie about starting afresh with Chalk and Cheese on Te Mata Rd, Havelock North and why you should visit them.

1 Tell us about the concept of Chalk and Cheese cafe.

Origin Earth is a small dairy production processor, producing local milk. In 2012, we outgrew the site we had near the hospital - we were offered the opportunity to move into a site that used to be the Havelock North Cheese Factory, which had a cafe.

As most people are aware, it was designed to be run as one thing, it ended up selling and ended up under separate tenancies. In 2013, it became available and it was really too soon for use but we expressed interest - because we couldn't do the cafe we put a cheese shop in the back of our factory.

The aim was always to have a cheese shop within a cafe, it's not a cheese cafe, it is a cafe that makes great food, we produce all our own bread, cure our own meats, make our own condiments plus we have our retail shop for cheeses.

Since 2013, we have been talking about if the opportunity ever came up we would do the cafe - in the last 18 months we have been in preparation for that.

2 What makes this such a special project, and what hospitality experience do you bring to the table?

It's very exciting and challenging, for the cheese factory side of things we have spent the past five years developing a fantastic team. Anyone that comes to our site knows they are just fantastic.

It is all about Hawke's Bay and the people, our people providing a service for them ... Richard and I love cafes and we are great frequenters at many of them.

3 How do Origin Earth products tie into the menu and everyday running of the cafe?

We had our maiden voyage of a low fat milk trialling it at our own cafe yesterday [Thursday] and then out to Havelock North cafes sampling it today.

It's really good for product development, we have a chef who is really keen on using our products - they are sheep and cow - sheep is a really good not very well known dairy- free option.

There are many products that have Origin Earth in them, the sweets have ricotta in them. We are also looking at lamb at the cafe from our dairy sheep farmer, pork is fed on our whey, we are working on provision on our beef from our dairy farmers - it's a really good relationship.

4 What makes it different from other eateries in the region? what are you trying to achieve?

What makes us a bit different is the fact we have got Origin Earth as part of our business, there are many local cafes that are hugely supportive of Origin Earth, the best cafes in Hawke's Bay, we would consider it a privilege to be at the standard of cafes in Hawke's Bay.

One difference is we don't buy anything, we bake our own bread. We have got an outstanding outside area providing for children, cyclists and dogs on leads are always welcome - the retail shop is obviously a difference."

5 When did you open the doors and what has initial reaction been like?

We opened on September 23, with a great deal of humour ... the weather was terrible, we had a couple of internal dramas in the morning then the rain started falling, then it rained substantially overnight.

At 6.20am we found our Toyota Corolla floating out in the carpark, by 2pm we were debating whether to sandbag our door but the customers kept coming all the time.

We could only say "welcome to Chalk and Cheese Cafe - every table has a water view". The weather was shocking but the customers were fantastic, we haven't advertised at all we have had a quiet opening to get the first couple of weeks under our belts.