Landmark Taihape cafe and sports shop for sale after 30-plus years in business

After 30-plus years on Huia St, two well-known Taihape businesses have been put on the market.

The Brown Sugar Cafe and Taihape Sports Shop, which are conjoined, are selling for $1,990,000.

Cafe co-owner Lee Thomson said she and fellow co-owner Charlotte Stanford would have owned the cafe for 30 years in August and while it had been a great journey, it was time to retire and enjoy the fruits of their labour.

They were looking to sell the businesses, buildings and land as “one big package”.

“We’re super, super busy, we’ve created a bit of a monster and we’re just ready to let somebody else take over the reins,” she said.

Thomson’s husband and Charlotte’s brother, Giles Stanford, has owned the sports store for 35 years.

“It’s been quite funny because the farmers have all been trying to work out how to band together to keep the shop going,” Thomson said.

“They came in and they said to Giles, you’ve been denied, retirement’s been denied, you’re not allowed to.

Giles Stanford started the sports shop five years before the cafe opened, originally renting out the building he would later buy.

Charlotte Stanford and Lee Thomson met while training to be kindergarten teachers in the 1980s when cafe culture was first starting to take off in Wellington.

They came to Taihape on a skiing trip, where Thomson met Giles Stanford.

“We came up for the weekend to go skiing and stay with her brother, and of course, I never left, fell in love with the brother,” she said.

She said on the skiing trips she noticed how few cafes there were out of the Wellington area, and how many people stopped over in the town on a daily basis.

“We were like, we could do something with coffee surely, we know how to make a nice cake.”

The opportunity came when they returned from an OE (overseas experience) and Giles Stanford purchased the property his store was on.

The cafe was built from scratch over two years with help from family, tacked onto the back of the sports store and constructed from parts of other demolished buildings.

“One local gave us their old front door and the big window at the end was from the old working man’s club they demolished. Our great big huge sink is out of the Taihape Railway Tearooms,” Thomson said.

Once it opened she said the business went from strength to strength and their turnover increased year on year.

The joint business remained family-run, with Charlotte’s husband Hunter Howard also working in the cafe.

Thomson credited the cafe’s success to sticking to what worked for them, having had the same daily menu since the 1990s.

“We’ve got our staff who know how to run the business and we don’t change anything, we have the exact same menu every single day,” she said.

They built up a strong local and national clientele with generations of people stopping over at the business.

“We still get adults coming in and saying, ‘Oh, can I order a happy pizza?’ because it’s nostalgia, they have to have that when they come here.”

She said they were looking to sell the businesses, buildings and land as one big package.

Thomson said she thought the business would be suited to a family like theirs, as it meant support was never far away.

“Charlotte and I have run the cafe as a two-person job, which has been perfect because there’s always one of us here.

“….you don’t need to worry about your business when you’re having a day off because you know your partner is there.”

They would also be there to train any buyers in how to run the business.

“You don’t have to be a chef, you just have to enjoy people, it’s really about managing a team of people and enjoying good food and we’ll train you to do the rest.”

ABC Business Sales managing partner Steve Davey is overseeing the sale of the businesses.

He said what struck him the most was how complementary the two businesses were.

“People do turn up there, grab a coffee and then go through and do some shopping,” Davey said.

“Everyone in the lower North Island has probably heard of Brown Sugar but are probably not as aware [of] how well the sports shop does as a complementary business,” he said.

He said there appeared to be a lot of interest in them.

“It’s only been on a week, but I think we had a record week in terms of web views and inquiries so it’s a very good first week,” he said.