Mega win for cafe

A Pukekohe cafe has won a community award for the second year running at the annual
Columbus Coffee Awards.

Columbus Coffee inside Mitre 10 MEGA Pukekohe owner and director Monique Porter and
her team won the Giving Back to the Community and the Digital Marketing awards earlier
this month.

As well as their two wins, they also came runner up for Franchise of the Year, Operational
Excellence, and Local Marketing sections.

Although proud of both accolades Porter said that the Giving Back to the Community award
was probably the most important one for her and her team.

“We kind of base our whole business around the community, and without them we’re noting, so that one’s always good to receive.

“We also have to give credit to Cassidy because she has pretty much solely won us the digital award for the second time in a row. Cassidy is the one that runs our social media pages, 90 per cent of the creativity on our social media pages are designed and executed by her.”

Since age 12, Monique’s daughter Cassidy Porter has worked at the Columbus Coffee in
Mitre 10 Pukekohe, by washing dishes and helping to clear tables.

Now at 22 she has just finished university and very recently became the co-owner and day-to-day manager of Columbus Coffee Mitre 10 MEGA Botany.

“She was looking for a new challenge so the opportunity to take on Botany MEGA came up,
a store that needs some growth and work, we got the opportunity to go for that.

“We had a good talk about it, and we decided why not it’s a great opportunity for her to grow, and learn business skills, and work around staffing, rostering, and costings, as properly in the future she may want to have her own business,” Monique said.

While she may be gone from her instore duties, Cassidy will still be helping the Pukekohe
branch with their social media pages and marketing.

The team at Columbus Coffee are always trying to help out their community anyway they can whether it’s through events, or charities.

“I think we always try to work together with the community, whether its sponsoring sports
teams or events or anything like that, we’ll put our hands up straight away.

“If it’s something that we can help within the community we’ll be there be, do that. We’re big with CureKids in New Zealand, we’ve got about four different events that we’ve done this year alone.

“Just trying to get our community engaged with our business and giving back where we can. We know we’re nothing without them so we owe it to the community to give back where we can,” said Monique.