Havelock North coffee stop gives away hundreds of free coffees while Eftpos machine broken

MT Coffee owners Tom and Meg Masterson from Havelock North. Photo / Warren Buckland

A Havelock North coffee shop gave away hundreds of free cups of coffee in good faith over three days while their Eftpos machine was broken.

Meg and Tom Masterson, co-owners of MT Coffee, had to order a replacement Eftpos machine from Auckland after the anti-tamper setting on theirs inexplicably activated and locked it irreversibly while staff were trying to serve customers on Tuesday last week.

A working replacement did not arrive until Saturday and they made the decision to give their coffee to customers for free, but asked them to pay for it when the shop had a working Eftpos machine again.

“We’ve got very loyal customers. We know most of our customers by name and we know them quite well. We just thought it was better to stay open, and we don’t care if we end up giving out a lot of free coffees,” she said.

“It is actually good for business, because people don’t get many things free these days.”

She estimated they usually sold about 200 cups of coffee per day and about 80 per cent of their customers paid with Eftpos.

She said she believed most people would come back and pay this week or had already done so.

“If some people don’t, well hey, maybe what we have given them helps them in their day and might have given them a lift, and that is all worth it too.”

“I’m quite a big believer in helping the community. We raised money for the cyclone through coffee sales and we also support local young people that need sponsorship for sports events.”

Regular customer Stephanie Meek wrote in a post on social media that she was grateful and she hoped others would come back to pay this week, as she had.

“I’ve been calling into MT Coffee since they opened about five to seven years ago,” Meek told Hawke’s Bay Today.

Fellow regular Nat O’Connor said she goes in every day to get coffee from MT Coffee.

“I felt like after Covid and the cyclone and with so many small businesses having to close, MT were really putting themselves out there and being very loyal to their customers in trusting that people would come back to pay,” O’Connor said.

“I also am a small business owner, so I understand first-hand how difficult the past few years have been.”