The Salt Barons blog - march 2021
As I sit here at my keyboard, in my office, located on our little plot of land high above the Oruru River, the peace and quiet is being assaulted by a wailing Tsunami alarm. I can see from my seat all the way down to the river, so I will know if the river empties that something is happening and prepare. But as I listen to the news, I just can’t sit still and do nothing, so I decided I needed to find a task to do. I haven’t done a blog in a while, as a dear friend of mine kindly reminded me recently, so its time to burst into print again, although it is hard to type with your fingers crossed.
March 31 will mark the end of our second full year of trading, and what a year it has been. It started with a Covid lockdown, that blew up all our plans for markets, shows and retail network expansion, and its ending with more Covid drama as well as a Tsunami warning!!!! Siiiiiigh!
I am a “glass half full” sort of a guy by nature, but honestly sometimes this year my unfailing optimism did start to wobble just a bit. But the wobble was eventually stabilised thanks mainly to our loyal customers, their unwavering support and the fortune of meeting some amazing people.
At the start of lockdown, and just like all other businesses around New Zealand, I had some dire thoughts about what may happen to our little operation. Mrs Salt Baron works in the health system and throughout the first Covid Lock down we took the decision to completely shut down The Taipa Salt Pig. The Pig (for short) operates from our home and importantly our home kitchen, and with Mrs Baron coming in and out of a environment where she was on the frontline helping medical practices and testing stations, we just thought it was safer to stop completely.
So, what does an Isolated Salt Baron do when he can’t make salt? Well, the answer is he gets to building infrastructure ready for when the crisis is over and “the salt making can start again”. The only real problem was the lack of timber we could get our hands on. Our predicament was helped by our neighbours, who at the time were living in Auckland and were in the process of building their house on the plot next to ours. They very kindly let me go shopping on their building site and rubbish pile and help myself to some A Grade and Z Grade wood. The result was the completion of steps down to the salt houses and construction of the lowest of our retaining wall evaporators, which we have named “The BonnevilleFlats”.
Bonneville is now operating at full capacity and is nearly as quick as “Gertrude The Glorious” and its completion has definitely helped boost production. In addition to building, we also decided to reach out to a number of people who we thought may like our product and may ultimately be able to help us spread the word. One of those was a national treasure,Chef Peter Gordon. We took the plunge and sent Peter an email and asked him if we could send him some salt to try, and to our delight he said yes!! Now one of the things you may not know about start up food artisans is that they all suffer from the same affliction. That affliction I have called “absentia quality confidence”. Of course, you like to think that your product is good, but at the same time you always worry that just maybe its not. Peter agreeing to taste our salt and then telling us he liked it just gave us the validation we needed, and little did we know that Peter was going to go the extra mile and help us even further. More on that later.
During lockdown and the subsequent drop down to levels we managed to re-open The Pig. Shortly after re starting we came across another person whose initiative would help The Pig make it through the Covid lockdown in a position we hadn’t expected. A young lady called Sarah Colcord, another national treasure, had the idea to start a Facebook Group called New Zealand Made Products. The goal of the project was to give small New Zealand producers a way to reach out across the whole country and get their products noticed and ultimately generate sales. We were by no means one of the early posters, but when we finally placed a post introducing The Taipa Salt Pig to the group in May, wow what a response. We got absolutely swamped with orders and from that moment on our little online store suddenly took off. From Invercargill to Kaitaia we were suddenly selling salt by the bucket full. Sara’s initiative has now morphed into a new site called Chooice, a very Kiwi name and is still going strong. Covid in a bizarre sort of way suddenly opened New Zealanders eyes to the concept of “on line Shopping” and judging by the continued demand through our website it promises to be a large part of the future for The Pig. If you haven’t yet posted on Chooice, give it a go, the exposure you will get is fantastic.
Not long after we had first made contact with Peter Gordon we were lucky enough to be introduced to yet another national treasure, Peter’s partner Alastair Carruthers. Alastair sent through an outline of an idea that he and Peter had which looked to start a new restaurant concept that would support the local community through charitable food initiatives and would also support local food producers by being Champions for their products. I have to laugh when I think back to this, because I remember quickly emailing back and suggesting that they were both clearly mad for thinking about opening an establishment in the middle of a global pandemic. Well thank god they didn’t take any notice of me, and more importantly thank god they didn’t immediately block me from further communication. The result of all of this is that Peter and Alastair’s vision, “Homeland” is now up and running and well and truly alive and well, and for us its been one of the luckiest breaks of all. Peter, Alistair and the Homeland team have championed the little salt pig at every chance, and as a result Homeland is now our biggest wholesale client. If you are in Auckland head down to the viaduct area and find Homeland, the food is amazing and if you are lucky you may also get the chance to talk to Peter and Alastair a couple of true Kiwi legends. Oh and if you are a small artisan producer looking for help, have a look on the Homeland website and give the team a call, you’ve got nothing to lose.
It has been a truly amazing year for us. At the start of the 2020 year my only hope was that we would maybe equal the first year’s production and results, but in the end, we’ve crushed it. As each month passes, we make new contacts, and slowly but surely the little pig from Taipa is growing. Thanks to Peter we’ve made an appearance on TV twice, had the opportunity to rub shoulders with some of the countries best chefs and even been featured in the Air New Zealand in flight magazine. Not bad for a little pig from the far north.
2021 looks to be an amazing year as well. New evaporators are being designed for construction over winter. Last year we made and sold about half a tonne of salt. This year we want to hit that magical one tonne mark. To do that we definitely need the new evaporators, but we are also about to unveil a new secret weapon that will revolutionise salt production in New Zealand. I can’t tell you too much right now but trust me once we are ready you are going to love the next step inThe Taipa Salt Pigs evolution. Keep an eye out too for something special some time later this year in time for Christmas, we have a couple of great products and ideas under development, and we are working with some awesomely talented people to bring you some really cool stuff.
We’ve met a lot of truly amazing people this year and we’ve been truly humbled by the words of support you’ve all given us. I think in many ways 2020 sucked, a lot!!! However, in many ways perhaps it also made many of us make some changes in our lives, changes that I think were for the better, and surely that’s a good thing right?
On that reflective note I will say goodbye, I just got the fright of my life from my phone as the Civil Defence all clear shrieked out over the airwaves. Looks like we dodged another bullet, lets keep dodging.
“Viva The Salt”