Halfway House on the market

Fulltime at Halfway House Takeaways as business owners Kevin (pictured) and Cherie McIlroy prepare to sell the popular main highway eatery. Photo / Doug Laing

Popular Clive landmark Halfway House Takeaways is for sale with the hope it will still be run by locals, as it has been for most of the last 67 years.

The business is being sold by born-and-bred locals Kevin and Cherie (nee Williams) McIlroy who have decided it's time to devote more time to their block down the road where they grow limes and run a few cattle.

While knowing it's time to move on, it's with a tinge of sadness for Kevin McIlroy, whose family have had a long history dispensing fish and chips and other takeaways in the area.

He remembers his own childhood getting takeaways from the shop, and the days when father Pat McIlroy ran another fish and chip shop down the road at the height of Hawke's Bay rugby's 1966-1969 Ranfurly Shield era — traffic stopping to get lunch on the way to the game, and to get dinner on the way home.

Many stop to eat meals beneath the branches and leaves of the landmark oak tree out front on State Highway 2, grown by the Deakin family which had the business for many years, for some time in its early days as Oakley Tearooms, and which still owns the site.

"I am going to miss the human side of it, the friends we've made, and the tourists," he said.

"We would like to sell to a local family, but we are open to all offers, and we have had interest from other places, like Wellington and Nelson. There is a lot of loyalty, and we've had strong support from the area, the school and the rugby club".

The ultimate prize is meeting the customers and "hearing all sorts of things", he said, but it's by necessity a seven-days-a-week concern which needs special people to run it.

"It needs a family," he said as an agent from Colliers put the signs up yesterday.

"You can't just do it by yourself."