If you tried to design the most complicated retailer in New Zealand, you’d be hard-pressed to get more imaginative than Mulberry Grove Store.
Perched at the edge of Tryphena, overlooking the pōhutukawa-lined shores, it’s a general store, a gas station, a café serving full English breakfasts, an award-winning pie counter — a destination Thai kitchen turning out some of the island’s best food. All running from 7am to 7pm, seven days a week, through summer madness and winter quiet alike, when much of the island closes its doors or cuts back.
That’s all before you wrestle with the realities of doing it entirely off-grid — as the whole island is.
Steve Crawley took over the store seven years ago, after Fronz left, and promptly set about turning it into something that shouldn’t really work on paper. Since then, the offering has expanded steadily: burgers, fish and chips, full café meals, Thai takeaway and sit-down dining — genuinely something for everyone. On an island where choice can be limited, that matters.
That it works at all is no accident. Before the Barrier, Steve managed large orchard operations on the mainland, overseeing big crews and complex logistics. Long days, moving parts and keeping people and systems running smoothly were already familiar territory — experience that shows in how unflappable the operation feels now.
What doesn’t change is the atmosphere. Walk through the door and you’ll be greeted with the same cheeky, deadpan welcome whether you’re a long-time local, a new arrival, or a tourist who’s just discovered Mulberry Grove by accident and wonders why no one told them about it sooner. Steve has a rare ability to relate to anyone, and to make everyone feel equally at home — usually while telling them they can’t possibly be “just buying one thing today”.
It’s not just a shop. For the south of the island especially, it’s a hub. A place where people linger. Where conversations happen. Where old hands, new residents, weekenders and visitors all end up crossing paths.
Outside, the gardens have become part of the experience. Ducks move between water features. Bees buzz through flowering rosemary. Oversized butternuts grow improbably well. Picnic tables sit beneath pōhutukawa, overlooking the harbour. In summer, it’s an easy place to lose an afternoon in the sun. In winter, the dining room fills around a roaring fire, steam rising off coffee cups and plates of hot food.
Behind the scenes, the operation is relentless. Keeping fridges, freezers and coffee machines running through peak summer means constant generator management. Power flickers in and out. Deliveries have to be planned, ordered, shipped, unloaded and stored — all on island time, all at island cost.
Steve jokes that “everything’s too cheap” and that he should put his prices up. Spend a couple of days watching the 12-hour shifts, seven days a week, the maintenance, the logistics, the staffing and the food prep, and you begin to suspect he might be right.
The timing didn’t help. Steve took on the store shortly before Covid-19 arrived, followed by lockdowns, then the caulerpa anchoring bans not long after. It’s hard to imagine a tougher run for a business so dependent on both locals and visitors. Yet somehow, Mulberry Grove kept going — and kept expanding.
These days the operation is very much a team effort. Steve runs the shop alongside his partner Na, with Chit newly arrived on the island as Thai chef, and a small crew keeping the till, the floor and the kitchen moving. Pete’s doughnuts — another Barrier institution — sell by the hundreds on Sundays. Out the front, Erica’s fruit trees add another layer to the mix, alongside newly added fridges stocked with fresh fruit and vegetables for the summer.
There’s no attempt to be flashy here. That’s part of the philosophy. The pitch is simple: good, fresh food, done properly, without pretending to be something it’s not. The irony is that the food — especially the Thai — is genuinely excellent.
They say you’re not a local on Great Barrier until you’ve been here twenty years. By that measure, Steve might not qualify yet. But by another, more practical one — where people choose to gather, eat, talk, linger and return — Mulberry Grove Store has become firmly part of the island’s fabric.
Great Barrier has always been a place of strong characters and unlikely enterprises. Mulberry Grove Store fits that tradition perfectly: complicated, hardworking, slightly chaotic, quietly impressive — and very much the choice of the locals.
