Morgan Redfern-Hardisty, the owner of a vegan café which was shut down by its landlords for refusing to offer dairy products, is walking the length of New Zealand in protest. Redfern-Hardisty, owner of the Cool Beans Café, was told in August by that Mangawhai Activity Zone Charitable Trust, which owns the grounds on which the café operated, that his lease would be terminated if he failed to offer dairy products. The Trust cited complaints from the community – something about which Redfern-Hardisty has doubts, considering his sales increased by 25 percent.
"I think I had one customer over those four weeks that said 'Oh no, I only drink normal milk', but 98 per cent of New Zealanders were adaptable," Redfern-Hardisty said. "I had three or four dairy farmers who came through and they all had a crack at oat milk. They were adaptable to try something new."
"Customers deserve choice and he is not prepared to offer this,” said MAZ Trust chairman Colin Gallagher. "We have been extremely fair and generous and it is squarely his decision not ours that he changed from offering both dairy and vegan additives to coffee for our customers to vegan only."
An online petition in support of the café has received more than 14,000 signatures in the last week and a half, but Redfern-Hardisty said that even if the petition did convince MAZ to change its mind, he had already made his decision.
"I know there's this petition that's gone around the world but [the Trust has] gone about this all the wrong way and I don't really want anything to do with them anymore," he said. "There are tensions and it's tainted and they're stuck in the past."
Redfern-Hardisty will walk the length of the Te Araroa trail barefoot to raise funds to fight animal cruelty.
