Hungary family grow business in Kāpiti

Andras Laszlo holding Gergo and Ivett Kerekes are settling into life in New Zealand. Photo / Rosalie Willis

A year and a half ago Ivett Kerekes, Andras Laszlo and their three sons Szilard, Andor and Gergo moved to Kāpiti with hopes of continuing their successful meat and cheese production business they had created in homeland Hungary.

Straight away facing issues getting their equipment into New Zealand, the family was met with hurdles to overcome and have since purchased equipment and started producing meats at a location in Palmerston North.

After successfully building their business up from having stalls at markets around Kāpiti, the family were approached and asked if they would consider opening up a café.

With most of their experience being in production of meat and cheese and supplying it to restaurants and catering companies, the thought of having a café was not on their mind but they took the opportunity and expanded their business to include Anzil café at Lindale.

"We thought it would be good to get a better understanding of the people, to meet them here and let them know they can get our products from us during the week," Ivett said.

"It's a bit more stressful to put up with, we haven't run our own cafe before but 99 per cent of the time we make it.

"It's been easier for us to focus on meat rather than cheese here as it's easier to comply with the standards here in New Zealand."

Moving their whole family over to New Zealand has been made easier by the Kāpiti community that has welcomed in the family.

"The people you meet and the market or at the café, they always make you feel like it was worth the wake up.

"In Europe you always had to call and there was so much bureaucracy, here I can go and actually talk to people, it's more personal. Here there has never been a day where I haven't wanted to go into work, there's always that welcoming attitude, their friendliness."

Over the year the family has continued at the markets, started Anzil café and set up a commercial unit in Palmerston North where they produce around seven different meats including cured and fermented salami, bresaola, coppa, prosciutto and speck making the trip several times a week, sometimes several times a day.

The family is in the process of bringing their production to Lindale with the start of next year targeted for all production to move from Palmerston North to Lindale.

At the moment they sell a mixture of their own products and imported products from Hungary with the hope that the ratio of their own products will eventually far outweigh the amount of products they import.

There will always be something Hungarian in keeping with tradition and to what they know.

"If you have good quality things put together you can't go wrong."