Dannevirke's shearing experience takes people's choice award

Winners: Punga and Samantha Mullins of Dannevirke's Catching Pen Cafe on High St,winners of the Lower North Island regional People's Choice award.

Not many people get to experience a woolshed, but Dannevirke's award-winning Catching Pen Cafe is giving people a taste of the shearer's life, with plenty of top-notch tucker too.

Owned by Punga and Samantha Mullins, the distinctive High St cafe has won the Lower North Island regional people's choice award, as part of the 2017 Meadow Fresh New Zealand Cafe of the Year Awards.

"We're over the moon with our win," Punga said. "People are loving the ambiance and they like taking selfies with our big mural."

The cafe has only been open for three months and Punga and Samantha married just four months ago in Fiji.

"We came back to Dannevirke and thought why not give it a shot," Punga said.

Sam trained at the Gin Trap in Hawke's Bay and has been a qualified chef for 10 years.

And when the pair decided to take up the challenge, they gave themselves just a week to refurbish the premises and get it ready for opening.

"Business has been so much better than we though, we've had a lot of local support, that's why we've been successful," Punga said.

The couple describe their menu as Kiwi cafe food, with a twist, with lamb's fry a popular item on the menu.

"I'm rapt we've been able to rally so many votes for the competition and I know shearers got right in behind us," Punga said. "And of course we've got an award-winning business woman on our team, my mother Mavis."

The couple said the ongoing support and encouragement they've received has given them the drive to succeed and do things they never thought possible.

Punga had been running the family shearing business, Paewai-Mullins, for eight years, and was a shearer himself for six, before opening the cafe where the couple are continuing the shearing legacy of great food and wonderful friendships.

But there was plenty of hard work leading up to the opening on Father's Day.

"Getting set up was the hardest and most stressful time in my life," Punga said.

Samantha's ethos is simple.

"I just like making people happy with food," she said. "We're lucky we've top-notch staff and our rural theme hits the right note with our customers. After we opened it was only a matter of a few days and we had to hire more staff."

With nine staff, including themselves and a couple of part-timers, Samantha said it had been satisfying to be able to provide jobs locally.

But the cafe has also been very much a family affair, with the couple's parents helping out by washing dishes when needed.

And family and friends also pitched in to help get the cafe ready for business, with Samantha's grandfather Dave Fairhurst completing all the distinctive woodwork, while her dad did the painting and Susan Higginson provided the signs, the mural and the rural artwork.

The cafe with the highest number of votes in the country will receive the National Puhoi Valley People's Choice award at an event held in Auckland, in February next year.