Our special guest on Tuesday was Alisha Tomlinson
Alisha was the winner of the Young Business Person of the year award, sponsored by our club, at the recent 2018 Newmarket Business Awards.
Alisha is originally from Matamata. Because her parents owned a cafe in Tirau she has food and hospitality in her blood. During weekends and school holidays she would work at the Café learning how to run a hospitality business from top to bottom. She became involved in event catering when the Youth Rowing World Cup was held at Karipiro some years ago.
At that event she set up as a fund raiser a degustation dinner using New Zealand food products for 300 guests to raise funds New Zealand rowing teams. The event was a success and as a consequence of that success Alisha decided to commit to an Event and Hospitality career.
To pursue that dream Alisha has worked in New Plymouth, Queenstown and latterly Auckland. She purchased a cafe in Albany in 2016 and developed at the same time the brand “Trio” ( and for more detail see her website www.trioevents.co.nz) and on the side set up a catering kitchen to undertake functions, business lunches and similar.
That activity led to Newmarket where she was offered the opportunity of reopening "Nuffield" a space on Nuffield Street which had been formerly a bar and restaurant. Alisha told us she turned the business around in four months. It went from moribund to busy which is testament to her work ethic. Alishas work in turning around "Nuffield" led to her receiving the Young Business Person of the year award. She has now sold Nuffield business and is focusing on the corporate and function market.
Her aim for her company is to serve to it's customers well made great homestyle food.
In addition to functions and corporate events Alisha through her "Trio" prepares and sells Christmas hampers for delivery to clients, something that made members ears perk up, but as she told us the food box market ( think My Food Bag) is saturated the moment so she will limit herself to things like the Christmas hampers.
Although based on the North Shore, Alisha is looking to locate a commercial kitchen more in the central city so she can extend her offerings in the central city.
Alisha's address was well received by members. She is an impressive young business person who well merits the award she received.
