The Coromandel Oyster Company is already thriving in the seaside town where they harvest and sell their produce, courier it nationwide and plan to begin exporting in the near future.

Owners John and Anne Louden have received plenty of interest from people in Australia asking how they can buy their products. So, the couple is planning to expand their business by building a new processing room that is fit for export standard. That’s likely to be on the cards this year or early 2019.

By building a new processing room, this will also allow them to build the old one into an indoor seating area for customers, to help them get through the winter season.

And while the export market is on the horizon for the Loudens, they have a loyal following in the Waikato and around New Zealand – likely thanks to their willingness to go above and beyond for their customers.

Case in point: a customer popped in recently to their premises where they sell all things seafood with a focus on, of course, oysters.

The man ordered one of their popular steak and oyster burgers. He loved it so much that a few days later he phoned to ask if he could order four burgers to be sent to Auckland.

“I said to him they’ll be cold by the time they get there, but he said, ‘I don’t mind because I enjoyed them so much’. So, we deconstructed the burgers including sauces, packed them up and couriered them to him. He was absolutely stoked,” Anne said.

“Because we’re a small family business, we can be reactive to what people want, and if theywant a deconstructed burger sent to Auckland, then we’re happy to do it, not a problem.”

The husband and wife duo bought Coromandel Oyster Company in February 2007. John had been involved in marine farming for most of his life, as his parents were scallop fishers. He used to go out on the boats with them dredging when he was young, before getting into fishing and then working on mussel barges.

Originally a city girl from Auckland, Anne moved to Coromandel around 27 years ago andmet John shortly after. Because John was heavily involved in the region’s boomingaquaculture industry, Anne would help him out with his mussel farming. She said it was a lot of fun and she learnt along the way, and that is how her interest and passion for it grew.

“I married a local, and became a local,” Anne laughs.

Their main oyster farm is 2 hectares, and at any given time there is around 40,000 dozen sitting out there. They also have a mussel long-line where they grow oysters on the line, and a ‘nursey farm’ in Whangapoua, which is currently in the process of being stripped out completely and rebuilt.

Anne admits that Mother Nature is often difficult to work with; a virus that affected North Island marine farms is a prime example. She said it was sad seeing so many people’slivelihoods destroyed because of the virus.

During this time, to keep themselves afloat financially and operating as a business, the Coromandel Oyster Company diversified and implemented a takeaways eatery on site.

“Something had to happen, because we’ve got so much money tied up in it that you can’tjust walk away. It was really sad, because we would go out on our farm and 80 per cent of the farm is gone, then more is gone the next day. It was awful,” Anne said.

However, over time the farm has slowly come back up to speed with oyster spat fall numbers steadily increasing and the business is again thriving.

The takeaway menu has been a huge hit with customers who get to the enjoy a picturesque ocean view while dining onsite.

Anne said the popular dishes on the menu include the steak burger, snapper burger, filleted flounder, mussels and, of course oysters. The mussel chowder is so popular that they go through 10 litres a day, and over summer it is double that amount.

When they were first looking at opening the takeaways side of their business, Anne and John did a lot of research.

“We have a great passion and pride in providing locally sourced products and we utilised the help of our staff to help taste test various products,” Anne said.

“We wanted to offer not so processed food where possible, to try and make takeaways healthy. A lot of thought and research went into every aspect of the menu, and it was a lot of fun doing it.”

Their Facebook page shows how popular their produce is, with more than 20,000 likes on their page.

“It came out of the blue really. We had some photos of our jumbo oysters and wanted to share them, so we decided to create the page and one Friday evening we pushed the publish page button, and the next thing, all weekend we were getting Facebook notifications,” Anne said.

“I’m old school so I thought I better reply to everyone and I remember saying ‘John I’mexhausted’ but we were so pleased with the phenomenal response.”

To view the Coromandel Oyster Company’s mouth-watering menu, visit their website or Facebook page. Next time you’re in Coromandel, pop in and see the friendly team to taste it for yourself.