Fleur Caulton can’t remember what she wanted to do as a child, but she always knew it was going to have something to do with people – and food.
“I’ve loved hospitality ever since I started out in the industry at age 15,” she said. “My career was just a progression from there really – I was having fun, I loved the people, and the great satisfaction hospitality brings to so many.”
Caulton is no stranger to success. She opened her first restaurant, Solera Vino, in Queenstown at the age of 21, freely admitting that she knew nothing at the time. After a decade of building Solera Vino into a successful and ground-breaking venue, Caulton was recruited to help create the Amisfield Wine Company, where she served as general manager for another decade. In 2012 she paired with Josh Emett to create Mayfare Group, which includes Rata, Madam Woo and, most recently, Hawker & Roll. Caulter is about to launch a third Hawker & Roll restaurant in Christchurch – a spin-off inspired by one of the popular dishes on Madam Woo’s menu – and is currently in the process of rebranding the Group to the ‘Go To Collection’.
“Our rebrand to Go To Collection was a logical next step for our business,” Caulton explained. “When we thought of what values capture who we are as a business, we landed on; adventurous, generous, genuine and skilful. These are our core ideologies, and we are working to weave these values into every aspect of our business. We aim to make our restaurants the ‘go-to’ for healthy, exciting and sustainable dining options in our communities.”
When growing a business such as Go To Collection, challenges present themselves every day. As Caulton hasn’t worked on projects of this scale before, it’s always challenging to know whether she’s making good decisions or going in the right direction, but she’s enjoying the ride. The plan for Go To Collection is to grow to more than 100 restaurants, both locally and globally, in the next decade.
“At Go To Collection, we are always evolving and reinventing our vision of what it means to be a hospitality operator in New Zealand,” she explained. “Most importantly, we’re adventurous in our approach to hospitality and are never satisfied with the status quo.”
Dining has changed in the decades since Caulton started out in hospitality. “I remember dining out as a young child was a pretty basic experience. Nowadays, the sheer vastness of ingredients available in our local supermarkets is mind blowing, let alone the variety of cuisines and the creativity of talented industry professionals.
“We’re incredibly lucky to have such a great, and constantly growing, collective of dining experiences in New Zealand.”
Constant growth means constant innovation, and sustainability is at the heart of Go To Collection. It is something about which Caulton is passionate, and she is constantly making moves to enhance the company’s sustainability in every aspect of the business.
“It should be something we just do rather than something we have to think about but that takes education, and plenty of it,” she said. “Our restaurants use either metal or paper straws, our menus are printed on recycled paper, all takeaway packaging is biodegradable and sourced from Innocent Packaging, and we only use paper or cardboard takeaway bags and boxes. We work hard to minimise single-use plastics.”
Since consciously reducing and monitoring the use of plastic wrap in Go To restaurants, the group has saved 32km of wrap in just one month.
“There is so much more to do, but we have targets in place to continuously look after the environment and ultimately stop the use of wasteful products and processes.”
