Tauranga’s hospitality businesses generally had a big summer. We are fortunate that our tourism economy is more reliant on visiting Kiwis than international tourists. 

The city was packed during the summer break with plenty of events and festivals happening across the region. 

It was important that hospitality businesses could replenish their cash reserves after they were mostly drained during last year’s lockdowns. Many have invested their personal savings into working cashflow to pay suppliers and staff.

Tauranga has large seasonal extremes with high demand in summer and quiet periods during winter. The money earned over summer generally gets eateries through winter as they continue to pay staff, rent and provisional tax. 

Many eateries have benefited from Government support to help them go online. This has helped cafes and restaurants to reach their loyal customers, reach new customers, and have confidence that they can survive any future Alert Level 3 lockdowns. 

The biggest concern is the shortage of skilled and low skilled staff, particularly in the kitchen. Before COVID-19, most eateries could pick and choose from travellers on working visas dropping in their CVs weekly. 

Now many businesses are having to carefully recruit for skilled chefs as borders are closed and they don’t have capacity to train up new apprentices. 

https://youtu.be/2YrJuUilTu8

Plus, the staff minimum wage is going up from 1 April 2021, which has an impact across all staff in the sector. Landlords are also increasing rents in the city’s key mainstreets. The relentless rising costs of doing business is significant for the hospo sector, which is a low margin, high volume business model. 

Eateries in Tauranga’s city centre are particularly vulnerable when corporates send their staff home during Alert Level 2 lockdowns.

There is a big smile from the hospitality business owners that I speak with as they are incredibly thankful for locals supporting their local cafes, bars and restaurants.

Please keep supporting your favourite local hot spots and encourage your friends in other regions to pop over the hill for a catch up. 

I had a chat to Lisa from Satori Lounge to find out how she has fared and how she predicts she will fare through the coming winter months. You can watch this by clicking the image above.