Business Assist and Mentoring

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Some of you may not be aware of a service that supports businesses in the area and is subsidised by  councils. Nelson Tasman Business Trust (Business Assist) is exactly what it says – they exist to help businesses, small and large.

You simply make contact through their website https://www.ntbt.co.nz/ . You will be offered a free consultation and they will outline how they can help. They hold workshops on subjects such ass Digital Marketing, Wellness, Leadership and Succession planning on a regular basis. There are many more subjects covered besides. Most of these training sessions are either free or have a small cover charge.

Business Assist also have a Networking morning tea every month. So you can meet other business owners and share any wins, problems, or successes. Meeting other business owners makes you much less isolated.

NZ Business Mentoring

If you need more personalized help they can offer business Mentoring in conjunction with Business Mentors NZ. Call Business Assist or register at https://www.businessmentors.org.nz online for a mentor. Gina will assess your needs and find a match of skills that you are missing. Sometimes it is easier to work with someone who is less emotionally involved with your business and give you good practical help.  “The experienced and independent viewpoint of a Mentor is invaluable”.

It may be that you need to grow your business and need direction as to how; or you may be a newbie to Digital Marketing and need some help with that; you may need help with a specific project.

“Having a Mentor inspires confidence and gives clarity on the direction of the business.”

Having been in business myself and used the services of a Mentor, I can highly recommend them.

Just remember you are not alone in this journey, use the services of lawyers, accountants and places like Business Assist to help you along in business.

Spotlight on 185 Hope

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185 Hope is a market garden and farm shop owned by Gavin Williams and Angela Penman since 2003 – 20 years ago!

Gavin and Angela originally had market gardens and a farm shop established by Gavin’s family on Main Rd Stoke near Placemakers. When industry started to expand, they bought land at 185 Main Rd Hope and relocated everything to there, including glasshouses.

They saw a niche where people wanted to shop for good quality, locally grown fruit and vegetables. The farm shop has grown from strength to strength and is the worst kept secret amongst locals who want to buy locally grown quality fruit and veggies at great prices.

You simply arrive at 185, located at 185 Main Rd Hope with plenty of parking available, pick up a wheelbarrow (no fancy trolleys here!!) and peruse the fantastic array of locally grown veggies available. At certain times of the year, you can go and pick your own, or fill your own bucket or bag with succulent already picked tomatoes, onions, or other pickling ingredients.

Our staff at Savage & Savage enjoy shopping at 185 and some of us source all the ingredients for some lovely preserves each year. The shop is open Fridays till 4.30pm all year around and in peak season – December-April – 9am-5pm Weekdays.

Take this great opportunity to support locally grown produce employing many local people. Check out their Facebook page. PYO@185Hope

Karin has given us her favourite (and easy) pickling recipe for Pickled Zucchini. It is delicious!!!

Karin’s Pickled Zucchini 

6 medium – large Zucchini – sliced to about 4-6mm thick. I use a small mandolin. 

Good handful of plain salt

2 tsp yellow mustard seeds

150ml White vinegar

3/4 C Caster sugar

1/4 C Red Wine Vinegar

1/4 tsp ground Turmeric powder

Slice the Zucchini and place in a colander and mix the salt through thoroughly. Leave for 30 – 60 mins. Have a glass of wine.

Rinse off salt and pat dry, then squeeze as much water as you possibly can out of the zucchini. A muslin cloth works well or just an old teatowel. Pack the squeezed zucchini into sterilised jars (about 3 or 4 peanut butter size).

Put a small pot on to warm and add the mustard seeds and dry-fry until they just start to pop. Quickly add the vinegars, sugar and turmeric and bring to the boil. Pour hot liquid into the jars over the squeezed zucchini right to the brim and put the lid on. Leave for a couple of weeks. I use these in salads, sandwiches, cheese boards and platters. Always a big hit!!!

Have another wine….

 

Planning for Taxation for Savage & Savage Clients

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Planning for Taxation for Savage & Savage Clients

Death and taxes are the two guaranteed things in life, and we’d like to help  our clients to plan more successfully for taxes. (death is a bit beyond us 😊) We are happy to sit down with you and discuss your individual needs.  Make an appointment with Pauline or Sari and the first half hour will be at no charge. You will only get charged for any time over the half hour.

 

Pauline or Sari will go over your known tax situation if your 2022 tax return has been has been filed. They will factor in things such as your personal circumstances, any major asset purchases you anticipate, any positive or negative changes to your monthly income, etc. We can also show you how to monitor your monthly Xero or MYOB Profit & Loss. That way we’ll  recommend  an appropriate amount to put aside each month for tax. Hopefully, this will take some of the stress re tax planning away from you 😊.

 

Pauline is available by phone (03 548 4894), e-mail (Pauline@savage.co.nz) or Zoom.  Sari is still working from home and is available by phone (03 548 4894), e-mail (sari@savage.co.nz) or Zoom.  Give one of them a call today to make a time.

Spotlight on business : The Framing Rooms

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The Framing Rooms and Quiet Dog Gallery

Making your artworks look really special is what Gill Starling and James Taylor aim for at The Framing Rooms.  The skills of five people combine to give customers a fabulous service.  They frame everything you may want to hang on your walls. They frame fine art through to posters, certificates, photography, memorabilia and sports jerseys. The Framing Rooms are the preferred framers for many of the region’s collectors, galleries and local artists.  Two of the team are Guild Commended Framers so you can be sure that your valuable pieces are in safe hands.  The business occupies an amazing warehouse space facing the Wakatu Car Park and customers can see the team at work.  Also in the building is the Quiet Dog Gallery (their sister business) which specialises in contemporary art by artists from around New Zealand.  Exhibitions happen every month so it’s well worth calling in on a regular basis.

https://www.theframingrooms.co.nz/  Check out their website or better still, Call in and see the fantastic art they have on display

E-Invoicing

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There has been a lot of noise made by the government lately about E-Invoicing. There seems to be a lot of confusion and people think that if they are already sending their invoices by e-mail they are e-invoicing, so what is the big deal? Actually E-Invoicing is a little different. And it is not an advantage for everyone….

E-Invoicing explained.

E-Invoicing goes one step further than sending invoices by email. Xero, MYOB and a few other accounting packages now have the ability to send the invoices directly into your accounting software. So there’s no need to print or manually key incoming invoices into your software package. They simply show up in your “Draft” Bills to pay in Xero for example. From there you allocate them to the correct code “Cost of goods sold” for example and approve them if you agree. This follows on from our last post explaining that physical copies of many invoices will no longer be required by IRD from next year.

What is the advantage?

The main advantage for our clients, is that for your regular suppliers, you will no longer need to print off or key in creditor invoices from registered suppliers. You just approve them. No more losing invoices to junk mail, no more endless hours of keying bills, no more clogged up inboxes.

What do you need to do?

Here is the catch, and this depends on your own business and how many suppliers you have.

  1. Enter your own NZBN into your own software (For Xero – Settings/Organisation Settings). Do this once only
  2. Sign up to e-invoicing (for Xero we can do this for you or talk you through this, it takes about 5 minutes. Please note the Xero online instructions available are not yet applicable). Again, you only need to do this once.
  3. Find out if your bigger suppliers have signed up too. There is a handy little Excel spreadsheet of those already signed up on the link at the bottom of the page
  4. Enter your suppliers NZBN number in your contacts (it is on that spreadsheet mentioned above). This will take the longest, so I would recommend doing just one or two first, and see how you like it.
  5.  Send your supplier an email letting them know your NZBN number and that you would like to receive e-invoices. Job done!!!

Your invoicing

You can also send your invoices via the same route, but if your customers are mostly non business people, there is a lot of work for not much advantage.

If you invoice regularly to other businesses, you may get requests to sign up.

Regardless of what you decide to do, e-invoicing is here to stay, and it would be prudent (and time saving for the future) if you were to include a businesses NZBN number into every new contact you enter into your software. The link below also tells you which software companies have the capacity to e-invoice. They are using a global company PEPPOL. You can continue to use Hubdoc (provided free by Xero) if you are using this currently – this is also a good option, but to use this you forward on emailed invoices to Hubdoc and then insert them into Xero. The advantage of this is that if you go to look at a supplier invoice that was entered via Hubdoc, you can see the original invoice emailed to you in Xero.

We can explain more in detail if you are interested.

https://www.einvoicing.govt.nz

 

World Class Wine List

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The Nelson Hospitality Association held a celebration of all things excellent in the industry every two years before the industry was severely impacted by the Covid pandemic. At the celebratory dinner awards were handed out to the best front-of-house person, the best barperson, best security professional, best young chef, best chef and best restaurant among others and I was invited to judge the best beverage list award for several years.

When it comes to judging anything the process has to be clear, even if the final award winners come down to the personal choice of the judges, I set up a process that ensured the Best Beverage List was able to be won by any hospitality business. I judged the various lists based on suitability for the venue (be it a bar or fine dining restaurant), the selection of non-alcohol drinks as well as alcoholic drinks, the inclusion of local wines, the selection of drinks available by the glass, the design and readability of this list and finally my perception of how much effort was put into crafting the list.

If you print a wine list in black print on a red card then you will go straight to the bottom of my class, and probably will end up wearing a dunce’s cap too. Black on red is one of the hardest colour combinations to read, especially in the dim lighting of a restaurant, and owners need to present something that can be read, not just something that has cool design features.

The last factor is important because many beverage companies offer to prepare the wine lists for venues and these can be very good beverage lists, but it’s the owners and bar managers who put a lot of effort into crafting their own lists that really stand out.

Nelson restaurant and bar Hopgood’s & Co has been shortlisted for the Best Designed Wine List at the World of Fine Wine World’s Best Wine Lists Awards 2022

One venue that never entered the local beverage list competition is Hopgood’s & Co Restaurant & Bar, owner Kevin Hopgood told me that while they are really proud of the things they do to create a great dining experience when it comes to local awards he doesn’t want to enter everything, and the beverage list is one he chooses not to enter.

That doesn’t mean the Hopgood’s & Co beverage list isn’t very good, in fact, it is world-class. They were recently shortlisted for the Best Designed Wine List at the World of Fine Wine World’s Best Wine Lists Awards 2022. To put this shortlisting into perspective others on the same shortlist are Mesa in Macau, China; House of Tides, Newcastle upon Tyne, UK; Hakkasan, Abu Dhabi, UAE; Lazy Bear, California, San Francisco, USA and Astrid & Gaston, Lima, Peru.

One other New Zealand venue has been shortlisted too, Charlie Noble in Wellington is entered in the Most Original Wine List category. The World of Fine Wine Awards have entries from all around the world and include some of the finest bars and restaurants.

So how much effort goes in to designing a world-class wine list? Hopgood’s & Co owner Kevin Hopgood told me they put a lot of focus on getting their beverage list right, not only do they have to offer diners a decent selection, the wines need to be able to pair with dishes they serve as well as being affordable. “If we get it right then the right wine will enhance the food we serve and vice versa, the food you’re eating will affect the flavours of the wine so we try and make sure we offer something that will pair with our food and that people will love.

“We are approached almost daily by wine reps and winery owners who want us to put their products on our wine list, some of the wines are very good and would probably work nicely with the food we serve but we simply can’t put every wine we like on the menu. If we did our wine list would be a 50 page book and we would need huge storage space for the stocks we would need to carry, so it just isn’t practical.”

The design of the wine list is also important, as evidenced by the fact there is an award for this at the World of Fine Wines Wine List Awards, “people need to be able to find the style or variety of wine they’re looking for easily, but also be tempted by things they may not have tried before, by getting the design right we should be able to make it difficult for diners to choose from an enticing selection” and that’s one of the things Hopgood’s puts a focus on, enticing diners to try something new.

“We want to have interesting and rare wines on our list, we are incredibly lucky to have a few wineries who are prepared to sell us library stocks of aged wines, having a properly aged wine can really enhance the dining experience.”

Because Hopgood’s & Co is also a bar they have an excellent selection of spirits, beers and cocktails too. Kevin says “We have a cocktail specialist working behind the bar so people can drop in for a lovely, freshly crafted cocktail or craft beer and have some food from our bar snacks menu if they don’t feel like a full meal. People often come in early for a drink before they have dinner so we try and make the whole dining experience one people can really enjoy.

“We want people to relax and have a great time while they enjoy the food that comes out of the kitchen, our chefs love making tasty and innovative small plates to go with drinks at the bar.”

The winners of the World of Fine Wine World’s Best Wine Lists Awards 2022 will be announced at a ceremony to be held in London on the 12th of September and if Hopgood’s & Co win, or not, just being shortlisted for the prestigious awards is something to be incredibly proud of and to celebrate. https://worldoffinewine.com/

Published in the Nelson Mail 2022-08-31 

 

Support your local hospitality businesses

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We all know a lot can happen in a very short time and things have changed significantly for people I wrote about in the last two weeks; firstly I spoke to a number of winery owners to find out what was happening with this year’s vintage and they were all very happy but said they didn’t need too much rain!

It just shows that when you a working in the horticulture sector and relying on Mother Nature to play nicely, she doesn’t always get the message. Ex-cyclone Dovi has delivered a huge amount of rain and warm air that will have an impact on the grape harvest this year, the quality of which is going to be determined by how much bright sunshine and drying wind we get in the next few weeks. Fingers crossed!

Water played a big part on the day my article about The General Grocery Store in St Vincent St was published too, this time it was a burst waterpipe that saw thousands of litres of water flood the premises stopping them from trading for a few days just as I told you to go and check them out.

Things are back to normal this week so make sure you stop in support this fantastic local store.

In recent weeks I have also stayed in touch with a few restaurants, café’s and retail stores in the region to see how they are fairing now summer holiday visitors have returned home, the answer from everyone has been the same; things are very quiet and because of concern about the appearance of Omicron locals are just staying home.

I certainly don’t want to minimise the impact of the Omicron variant of Covid, it does have the potential to put a huge amount of pressure on our health systems, but I firmly believe we need to get on with our normal lives as much as possible.

It is still safe to go out for a meal or a drink, it’s safe to visit retail stores and you can certainly buy your lunch from one of the many food outlets in the region. You just need to be sensible and go to places that have good Covid practices in place.

We have some fantastic restaurants, bars and cafes in this region and if we don’t support them some, if not many, will be laying off staff, reducing opening hours or simply close permanently and that would be a huge loss for the region.

There are a few hospitality venues that I’m sure will get through these tough times, simply because they are outstanding at what they do, but it won’t be easy. That was reinforced last week when the Cuisine Good Food Awards were announced.

In this region three businesses were highlighted as outstanding examples, Urban Eatery Restaurant & Bar, Hawker House & Bar, and Hopgood’s & Co made the exclusive Chefs Hats list. The Chefs Hats are New Zealand’s version of Michelin Stars, they shine a light on businesses that deliver a high quality hospitality experience consistently, that means these are places you can rely on to be great every time you visit.

You can read about the Cuisine Good Food Awards at www.cuisine.co.nz/awards and when you do you will see that Urban Eatery Restaurant & Bar and Hawker House & Bar earned One Chefs Hat once again while Hopgood’s & Co not only retained their Two Hat status but also won a category award, the Pead. sponsored Food Legend/Long-Term Player Award.

Hopgood’s & Co chefs Aaron Ballantyne, left, and Kevin Hopgood

The judges said “Familiarity breeds contentment in the long-term partnership of owner Kevin Hopgood and head chef Aaron Ballantyne. They’ve been working together for 15 years and the harmony is reflected in what they produce. Consider the finish, for starters: a dessert of 70% chocolate mousse with cherry, amaretto and caramelised milk gelato. Flavour and texture explode from each component and with all the colours of a Chardin painting it’s an illustration of something particularly fabulous. The predecessors are equally impressive, such as our fish of the day – hake – which Kevin had brined on arrival to help it keep its form. Sautéed artichoke and crisp cauliflower made a great counterpoint. Everything is taken into account, from the sparkling glassware to the gracious oversight of the dining room. Hopgood’s has that magic capacity to make you feel that dining out is something to delight in.”

The Food Legend/Long-Term Player Award recognises the commitment they have made to the food and hospitality industry over many years, they lead by example. Kevin Hopgood, Head Chef, Aaron Ballantyne, and all their staff go to work every day to create dining magic and this award is something they can be immensely proud of.

The same can be said about the owners and staff at Urban Eatery Restaurant & Bar, Hawker House & Bar and every other hospitality business in the region. These are people who go to work every day to make tasty food for you and me to enjoy. Many hospitality and retail operators I have spoken with in the last couple of weeks tell me it has been the quietest weeks since they have been in business, some for 20 years plus.

As I said earlier, we need to support every business in the region or many will close. All you need to get on with your life is a vaccine pass (I note 95% of Nelsonians are eligible for it) and take sensible precautions. You don’t need to hide away, but if you’re not comfortable going out for any reason then make sure you do your on-line shopping with Nelson businesses. Also keep an eye out for click & collect offerings from food retailers, restaurants and cafes.

Shopping local has never been more important.

Published in the Nelson Mail 16.02.22

Rustic Cuisine

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Rustic Cuisine on Rutherford St is owned by my two favourite French people, Mylene and Greg Auphan who used to own La Gourmandise. Their latest venture is to develop a range of French style foods in jars ready for you to take home and enjoy.

It goes without saying that when you are developing a new concept you need to earn a living so they took over the building opposite Nelson College for Girls and are producing the wonderful crepes and galettes everyone enjoyed at La Gourmandise as well as making cabinet food for morning tea, lunch and afternoon tea.

Rustic Cuisine is a regular morning stop for me, the coffee is too good to go past, and I have noticed a large number of regulars doing the same thing. The fact they sell outstanding pastries doesn’t hurt their reputation for quality either.

However it is the food-in-a-jar that is the future for this young business, Greg told me they have invested in high quality equipment so they can produce enough to take to a much bigger New Zealand market. He also told me he is developing new recipes and has had to refine how he prepares his current recipes because the equipment cooks the food quite differently.

“Because it’s quite a long cook at a high temperature I need to adjust recipes to make sure the food doesn’t break down in the jars, we are doing lots of small trials to refine everything before we go into full production.”

In the meantime you and I get to try the new recipes he is developing before he adjusts the cooking process for each one. Dishes like Coq au vin, Beef Bolognese, Lentil Dahl, Onion Soup and their wonderful Cassoulet are prepared and packaged in jars ready for us to take home, heat up and enjoy.

My top tip for your next visit to Rustic Cuisine – if you see some in the food cabinet don’t even try to resist the lemon meringue tarts, they are outstandingly tasty.

First published in the Nelson Mail 03.06.20

Kawai Cottage

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If you are looking for delightful accommodation in Nelson that isn’t just another motel or hotel room then check out Kawai Cottage.

It’s a stunning cottage in Nelson city, lovingly renovated and furnished by clients of Savage & Savage.

Kawai Cottage is an original kiwi cottage in all her original glory but with a bit of luxury and glamour for you to enjoy. It is sunny, comfortable and close to the CBD.

French doors lead you into the garden and patio area, both of which enjoy lots of sunshine and very private.

Check it out or book the cottage for yourself, visiting family of friends by clicking here

Celebrating 25 Years of Creativity at Downings

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The year is 1994, Sony releases the PlayStation One; Lieutenant Dan gets new legs; Friends makes its debut and Tony Downing starts a design studio out of a small flat in Tahunanui. Twenty five years later, that business is a bit bigger!

Downing Creative is the leading Marketing and Branding creative business in this region and we are proud to have been part of their journey.

Congratulations to Tony, Vanessa and everyone at Downing Creative and thanks for the work you do for us and for trusting us as your financial advisers

Check out their new website to see how they can help you and your business. Click here for some great ideas