Raising the bar

Business boomed for mum-and-dad chocolatiers Bennetts of Mangawhai – and now their offspring are playing a big part in the company’s sweet success.

EMILY BENNETT FOLLOWED an unlikely route to the top job at the chocolate company bearing her family’s name – by way of shoemaking training in Italy and three-quarters of a chemistry degree. She isn’t the only one to find herself unexpectedly immersed in the business her parents launched from their converted garage in 1998. Both of Emily’s siblings have taken circuitous routes into the family owned firm, which now employs about 50 people across the purpose-built factory, retail shop and cafe in Mangawhai. Older brother Brodie is a French-trained chef who worked in Paris and Melbourne before taking charge of the cafe kitchen, which can feed up to 750 a day on a busy weekend. Younger brother Harry has a master’s degree in French and taught English in South America before taking on the front-of-house role at the cafe. The chocolate company currently imports about 30,000kg of raw Belgian chocolate each year and they say volume is increasing as business booms in the rapidly growing holiday town. Ten percent of sales are online. The rest is split between retail shops around New Zealand, and the Mangawhai flagship store where visitors can watch the products being made through a window into the factory. Over the past year, domestic tourism has helped push trade more than 50 percent higher than pre-COVID levels. The factory produces roughly 40,000 boxes of chocolate annually, but also turns out a vast array of chocolate bars and treats such as caramels studded with locally harvested salt, or praline eggs that help raise money for endangered fairy terns. Emily was seven when her Irish-born mother Mary and Kiwi father Clayton moved their brood from Dublin to the quiet coastal village north of Auckland, in search of that idyllic beach-and-bush barefoot New Zealand lifestyle. Before leaving Europe, nurse Mary and scientist Clayton travelled to Belgium to train as chocolatiers. That Kiwi lifestyle, the pull of whānau, and the death of their father in 2012 drew the siblings back home from overseas. “When we were young we were encouraged to find our own way in life,” Emily says. "There was never any expectation that I would come back and be managing [the company]. If Dad was alive, he’d be running it with Mum and there’d be no jobs for us. “People thought my parents were crazy building this place in this town 13 years ago. But they just had so much fire inthem. Dad was the business, mathematical, scientific precision guy and Mum has a natural flair for sales and design.”

People thought my parents were crazy building this place in this town 13 years ago. But they had so much fire in them.

Mary is still a director and ventures into the factory most weekdays (she lives in an apartment above it). Once a week, the matriarch cooks for her children while they talk shop. She also founded MangawhaiSalt, a business that harvests bucket loads of sea water and processes 1000 litres at a time for use in the chocolate factory and in a range of flavoured table salts. Emily is said to be most like her father: practical, analytical, good with numbers, a problem-solver who prefers to work quietly behind the scenes – and she knows the business intimately. As a child, the middle Bennett helped pack chocolate boxes afters chool. Later, she lent a hand during university holidays, while pursuing the chemistry degree she eventually abandoned in favour of shoe-making studies. After manufacturing shoes in Costa Rica and India, she returned home to work as a barista in the Bennetts cafe while establishing her own footwear company. Eventually Emily traded leather and shoelasts for cacao beans and balance sheets. “When the GM resigned, he said, ‘I don’t think you should hire another person. You know the business because you’ve grown up in it’.”She says it can be tough for outsiders to grasp the ethos of the family business. “I come to work thinking how can I make this a better place for people to work in? A better experience for customers coming in the door? That’s just been the environment of the company from the beginning.” Some employees work shorter days tofit around their families. One would-be police recruit cut back her hours to train for the service’s entrance test. During quieter months, the factory operates extended hours Monday to Thursday, then shuts on Fridays to grant staff a three-day weekend. All three siblings socialise with each other and their staff, some of whom have been with the company for more than a decade.

I’m here because I love it.To spend every day working with my brothers, my mum– it’s a natural place for me.

Emily and her partner recently built a house 10 minutes from the factory and she rarely strays far from Mangawhai in case she is needed – to roll up her sleeves and reset water pumps or deal with a broken cafe oven on a hectic long weekend. “I’m here because I love it. To spend every day working with my family – my brothers, my mum – it’s a natural place for me. I feel connected to the area and connected to the business. It’s got my name on it. I like all my staff and enjoy coming to work every day.” The buck stops with Emily when it comes to decisions over new flavours, ranges or packaging. She oversees four other tenants in the building and all staff including her brothers. “Technically, I’m the boys’ boss but I leave the cafe to them because they do a great job.” She never tires of the factory’s product. “I eat chocolate all day long. I’ve had six chocolates already today,” she says, mid-afternoon on a Friday. “I always go for the same: chewy caramel, macadamia caramel and chocolate mousse. ”Dark or milk?“ Milk. I know, owning a chocolate factory, I should probably say I prefer dark, but I love a bit of sweetness.”

bom.co.nz