The Nada Bakery in Wellington. Photo: Supplied
An award-winning suburban bakery badly impacted by roadworks has set up a food truck 200m down the road.
Michael Gray, owner of Nada Bakery in Wellington, said his Tawa store had been disrupted by waterworks on the road outside since November.
The temporary lack of parking meant they had lost 60 percent of their revenue, and they had been told work would continue until April.
Gray said their food truck, parked up outside Zip Plumbing down the road from their Main Rd store, opened this week.
The bakery had, like many others, been affected by the downturn caused by Covid-19, and had been badly flooded during torrential rain in July 2021.
Despite this, it claimed gold for the best potato-top pie in the country in the Bakels New Zealand Supreme Pie Awards the following month.
They also have a store in Johnsonville. Gray said their Tawa's store's location outside of a main centre meant the majority of their customers came by car.
"When you're hungry, and you want to stop them for some lunch, car parking and the ability to stop the car nearby is critical to the survival of a business. And that sort of area, it's not an inner-city business where people are coming out of offices," he said.
"It's very much a transient or destination-based business. So we're seeing a customer can't count a long way down."
He said the food truck wouldn't be enough to make up the deficit.
"I'm not saying [the council] should come along and stump up with 60 percent of my turnover," he said. "I know, that's unreasonable."
But Gray said he would like to see more consultation with businesses about solutions and workarounds before work began.
"Maybe they actually need to have a team that comes in for business continuity, and talks to business owners [saying] this is the sort of fix we're going to have, these are the sorts of ideas that we can bring to the table and help you execute in your business to get through."
He suggested in cases like his there could be an agreement that whoever was contracted to do the roadworks used his business for catering.
"That might only be another couple of hundred dollars. But it could be the tipping point at the end of the day."
