Who says portable can’t be permanent? An Auckland café housed in a recycled shipping container is celebrating its fifth anniversary on Saturday, a journey framed by New Zealand’s largest ever transport infrastructure project.
The Waterview Coffee Project was started in 2013, two years after construction of the Waterview Tunnel began, in a small block of shops in the Auckland suburb. Since then, the Waterview Tunnel has been completed, a new local school has been developed and hundreds of new homes have been built in the area. The café has grown to become an important hub for the local community and space for the local school, kindergarten and community groups to hold events and fundraisers.
"This was always about building a sense of community and filling a gap in Waterview for people to meet, mingle and drink good coffee," said Dean Lawton, part of a syndicate of four local families who own and manage the cafe. “It’s great that we can celebrate this continued vision and success. This was always about building a sense of community and filling a gap in Waterview for people to meet, mingle, and drink good coffee.”
Fellow co-owner Matt Poland said that the five years of operation had flown by, and the café was now truly a hub for the community.
"[Waterview] was an area which didn't have any identifiable town centre or hub,” he said. “Now it has a place for the local kindergarten, the local schools, and community groups to run activations or events, to raise funds for their causes.”
Poland harbours ambitions to grow the project in the coming years, through hosting more events and live outdoor gigs.
Burns & Ferrall is offering the chance for one lucky company to walk away with a fully equipped, fully functional commercial kitchen housed inside a custom-built recycled container, worth over $125,000. Simply spend $1000 at Burns & Ferrall to go into the draw.
