For a dollar and some change, Patchy makes paper cup orders out of a supermarket trolley using instant coffee, boiled water stored in a Thermos, white sugar, and blue cap milk.
Pay $2, and Patchy will throw in two biscuits for your troubles - a stark difference in price compared to the cafés sitting above him in Commercial Bay, where you’re more likely to purchase a coffee and cookie for $10 and above.
Patchy was told on Thursday morning by Auckland Council he will need a permit to continue operating his wallet-friendly business.
Luckily, sudden TikTok fame and his can-do attitude has won him over a group of supportive fans - some of whom have even set up a Givealittle page to help him pay for the permit and the tools needed to make his business official.
In NZ if you order a coffee, it’s going to be espresso unless explicitly stated otherwise. That means you don’t just need the coffee, you need to make it on the spot and not brew it hours before. Plus you need someone with a bit of skill to make it.
He’s selling instant coffee*, but I doubt he could continue that if he started a coffee cart. In NZ, it’s literally the law that your employer has to provide coffee, and it’s almost always instant coffee (I’ve worked places with fancier coffee machines, but they also have instant available). So if he’s hoping to sell to people on the way to a place that gives it out for free, and run it as a fully fledged business, I think that may not happen.
We are probably over-analysing the story though, it’s just this guys 15 minutes of fame.
* I have no idea if people outside NZ know what instant coffee is, because I know that NZ was one of the first and only places in the world that it got popular. Basically it’s a powder you mix with hot water and now you have something that tastes sort of like coffee (like how drip coffee and espresso taste quite different but are also both definitely coffee, instant coffee has it’s own unique flavour but is also definitely coffee. The flavour is not normally considered “good”, but it’s pretty familiar to people in NZ so also not inherently “bad”).
haha I remember instant coffees like SANKA here in the states. Tasted just like the coffee powder we’d get in MREs in the military. It’s… brown. and caffinated.
That’s about what it’s got going for it.
Yeah, but if you’re cold and wet its fucking amazing