GIVING THE PEOPLE WHAT THEY WANT
A new dessert bar’s delivering to a peachy-keen Mount audience.
WORDS HAYLEY BARNETT | PHOTOS ASH MUIR PHOTOGRAPHY
On our way home from Hamilton recently, after a night of dance comps, my daughter begged me to detour to POPPYPEACH. I figured we’d just wait. A Mount store was rumoured to be opening any day now.
“No,” she said. “This is the original. We have to go to this one.” That’s the kind of pull POPPYPEACH has built in Tamahere, and now it’s landed right here on Maunganui Road.
POPPYPEACH opened in 2021 as a salad and smoothie bar, just around the corner from owner Angie Millar’s home in Tamahere. It was a lovely idea, but a couple of years in, it was clear the concept wasn’t financially viable, and Angie had to find a new way to make the space work.
The answer came from a family holiday in Australia, where dessert bars had everyone lining up together, and from the baking Angie had been perfecting on the side. Cinnamon rolls first, then whoopie pies, both gone within the hour, every time. It didn’t take much convincing after that. If people wanted dessert, POPPYPEACH would give them dessert, and give it to them well.
The Tamahere store has been a destination from day one, but it sees almost no foot traffic, so a second store somewhere with people walking past was always part of the plan. When two of Angie’s best friends, who live at the Mount, sent her a video of an empty shop on Maunganui Road, she went to check it out. The layout was almost identical to Tamahere’s. Eight weeks later, POPPYPEACH Mount was open.
There was no big launch, just Angie posting to Instagram the night before. A few well-followed locals posted about it that first weekend, and by Sunday the store was “slammed”. The pace hasn’t really let up since.
The Biscoff Blondie Sundae remains a firm favourite, alongside POPPYPEACH’s famous cookie pies and a home-baked sticky date pudding, though Kinder Bueno has become the new top seller. Everything’s baked from scratch in-house, and the Kāpiti soft serve and frozen yoghurt flavours change monthly, so regulars never get bored.
Angie isn’t planning another store this year, but further afield is on the cards eventually. For now, she’s focused on her teams at both stores, and on keeping the people fed with whatever sweet thing they’re after next.