"It was a baptism of fire, it was so busy, I remember my boss saying to me first thing one morning - 'I've got some bad news and some terrible news. The bad news is we have a table of 25 coming in at 9am and the terrible news is that we are going to be pounded until 11pm'."
Mr Hopkins, 28, spent his free time passionately pursing snowboarding and surfing, he said, which resulted in several injuries along the way - the worst being a fractured skull that robbed him of his sense of smell.
"Around the time I was recovering from that, I saw an ad in the paper advertising for kitchen staff in Canadian resorts and thought that sounded pretty good. I figured I could apply and not mention that I had no sense of smell."
He got the job and soon found a better way of making up for his lack of smell, he said.
"I looked at the rosters and the cheffing team had terrible hours and really early starts but the dishwashers had much cruisier hours, which meant I could still earn good money but have much more time off for snowboarding. Dishies don't need a keen sense of smell."
In his first season at the resort, he managed 105 days of snowboarding and in his second season he snowboarded for 136 days of the year.
Mr Hopkins continued to chef and travel the world, spending time in Australia and Japan and honing his skills in the kitchen, in the surf and on the ski slopes. So why the sudden change from being a chef and travelling the world to the dairy industry?
"I'd done what I wanted to do with cheffing, although I loved the job and the travel it dawned on me that I did not want to still be doing this when I was 35 years old."
He spent time on the family farm when he was young in the school holidays. "I'd got a sense of what the farming life might be like from an early age and I liked the fact that all my family was involved, from aunties to uncles and cousins. The opportunity to live in the country and enjoy New Zealand was a real bonus."
So he enrolled at Taratahi Agricultural Training Centre in 2013, that year winning the Dairy Theory Prize and the award for top dairy student.
"I love the dairy industry because as well as the basics like being able to care for animals and being outside there's also the potential to grow your own wealth and to create your own business." He graduates as a second-year student later this month, after which he starts as a trainee herd manager.
