Paper Mulberry Cafe - Paper Mulberry Cafe 89 State Highway 2

The Paper Mulberry Café:

The Paper Mulberry Café is a must stop on your way to CHB! A blue church like building peers over the surrounding maize fields opposite Te Aute College. Watch out otherwise you may miss us and miss out on visiting our resident Cat, Mulberry! This beautiful historic building has been around pre Napier’s earthquake in 1931 making it 110 years old. October 1999, the weekend before labour weekend was the opening debut of the cafe! Dave and Lyn Robinson, along with Geoff and Jan Speeden, worked as a team to bring this Café to life! Not to mention many, many more people joining in on the project of converting an almost derelict church into the thriving café it is today.

This brings us to the question – how has a 20 year old girl taken on this prize and what does she intend on doing here? 

I will begin by telling you a little about myself! I was born in England and moved across the world to our lovely Aoteroa at 13 and carried out the rest of my schooling here in Hawkes Bay. Alas 15 year old me needed to earn some pennies and went looking for a job at none other than The Paper Mulberry Café! From there on I have worked my way up the ranks – Casual dishwasher, Part time front of house/barista, full time cook and baker, manager and then to owner. This is one of the parts of my life that I can say I am proud of myself. This is not something I dreamt of growing up. This is not something I would have seen myself doing at the age of 13. This is not something that many people would even remotely enjoy. But I do! I’m glad I took the opportunity when it came along and I cannot thank everyone around me enough for supporting me.

Just to finish off, I would love your support as I continue this adventure of combining the old with the new, keeping the character whilst refreshing the Mulberry’s’ image.

I hope to see some new faces soon!