It’s All in the Details
Kai is art. And when it is made with care, commitment and a genuine desire to make people happy, it becomes an experience, something people remember long after the plates have been cleared.
For Amy of Sugarfish, creating those experiences has been a way of life. It is perhaps fitting that someone who has spent so much of her life making other people’s moments special finds talking about herself one of the harder things to do. But look a little closer at what she has built, and there is plenty worth celebrating.
Amy grew up on a farm in Whangapoua, where she took to the kitchen from a young age, cooking for the family while her parents worked long hours on the farm. After a year at Nelson Polytechnic and another at AUT, she headed to Australia looking for experience and found herself cooking every day for crews of 30 on pearling boats off the remote Montebello Islands, 120 nautical miles from Western Australia.
With supplies arriving by seaplane once a week, feeding a crew meant serious planning, organisation and resourcefulness. It was an unlikely training ground for what would come next.
Back in the Coromandel, Amy started a family and spotted an opportunity at the Mercury Bay Aero Club. Rather than simply opening a café, she saw potential in the main hangar and created the Flight Club Ballroom. Weddings followed, then requests to cater weddings elsewhere around the peninsula. Sugarfish grew, ‘Bertha’ the mobile catering trailer joined the team, and eventually Amy made the decision to focus entirely on catering.
Today, Sugarfish caters for around 50 weddings every season, alongside conferences, birthdays, memorials, festivals and all sorts of other celebrations. But behind those numbers is something much more personal. “I love to bring a smile to someone’s face,” Amy says. “I always want to give people a little extra.”
That commitment comes with a price. Wedding seasons can mean weekends and summers booked 12 – 24 months ahead, family events moved to weekdays and important occasions missed. Amy credits her partner, parents and children for helping her make it all work.
Her desire to create opportunities for others has also shaped the wider Sugarfish family. Ahi, the mobile pizza oven, and Awa, the coffee cart, began partly as a way to extend work for the talented locals who help during the busy season, but have grown into services in their own right.
Ahi is available for dry hire, with ingredients supplied or guests encouraged to bring their own toppings and create their own pizzas. Awa is available as a staffed coffee cart for events, including day-after wedding gatherings, with or without food. Both offer a fun, relaxed way to add something special to an event.
And now there is Lofte. Born from a gap Amy noticed at her own events, Lofte offers elevated glassware and tableware for celebrations beyond the traditional Sugarfish wedding, from business functions and smaller gatherings to parties at home.
It is another chapter in a story that has always been about more than catering. It is about bringing people together, creating something beautiful, and helping them celebrate life in this place Amy has called home for so long.
“I have been privileged to be welcomed onto people’s land and into their homes to help them celebrate,” she says.
And perhaps that is the real art behind Sugarfish, and now Lofte. Making people feel looked after.
Elevated glassware, tableware & event details – lofte.co.nz
Instagram: @lofte_hire
Sugarfish
Catering & celebrations across the Coromandel – sugarfish.co.nz
Facebook: Sugarfish / Instagram: @sugarfish
Words by Leonardo Magri
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