Meet the Team:

  • Samuel Caves

    Primarily cutting his teeth in the Christchurch Hospitality Scene, Sam has spent the last 15 years honing his skills all for this moment. Generally he has focused on coffee and tea but has made large forays into restaurants and bars, this means not only can he make you a beautiful latte but his cocktails are pretty damn stunning too. It is a crying shame then that he is a terrible cook and has a definite aversion to kitchens.

  • Zoliekah Macfarlane

    Starting her hospitality career just down the road in Timaru, Zoliekah now has 14 years experience under her belt. She’s multitalented, just as comfortable in commercial kitchens as she is behind coffee machines. Her only shortcoming (according to her at least) is her bad habit of bringing home all kinds of strays, from kittens hiding in dumpsters to pigeons with broken wings. What's her greatest catch of all though you might ask? Well a certain kitchen avoiding Coffee Roaster she'd say with a cheeky smile.

  • Maximilian Macfarlane

    The main man (or rather cat?) behind the whole endeavour, without his drive, passion, and brains The Fairlie Good Store would never have gotten off the ground. Sam and Zoliekah both describe him as the Purr-fect Boss to work for.

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Our Story, Our Goals, and Us

Fairlie Good? That's an interesting name...

Yes, it was intentionally a pun. We're sure nearly everyone who has passed through the area is guilty of using some form of it.

So what is the Fairlie Good store then?

Honestly we aren't sure what the final look of this will be, we've both come from hospitality backgrounds, so we thought we'd start there. Think of it as our way to interact with the community around us, or more specifically create some good within the community around us, whether that is in the form of community outreach, supporting volunteer efforts, or training initiatives at the local high school. So long as we are managing to progress and help with things like this then we believe we are succeeding at our goals and we'll let the development and growth of the store happen organically to reflect that.

Well that's cool, but where does Fairlie Good Coffee Co. fit into this?

Like we said above, we both have come from hospitality backgrounds and so it was the easiest and most familiar place for us to start with and build a base from. Sam's background is especially geared towards this and so is a major driving force behind this particular project.

This is sounding great guys, so where is the actual store? I'd love to visit.

At the moment? Put simply, it only exists in our imaginations™.

However that's not to say it never will actually exist. Pop-ups and small event based offerings are definitely on the near horizon, but commiting to a physical store simply wasn't something we could manage straight away.

So how do we meet you and chat to you then?

Well that's easy,

Sam is currently found around the roastery or cruising around town making deliveries. Very occasionally he can be found doing fill in shifts at various cafes in the Mackenzie district.

Zoliekah having flown the coupe can now be found down the road managing Verde Café, schmoozing her regulars that make the trip to visit her.

Outside of our regular work hours at those jobs, Sam is often found doing admin, doing some form of arts and crafts, or working on our next venture. While Zoliekah is often found out in the garden, reading a book, or stuck behind a computer trying to work out just how many coffees can be chalked up to business meetings in one day before it gets a bit sus.

That's a relief, one final question though. What's with the cats?

We almost thought you wouldn't ask, where roasting and coffee are Sam's passions, Cat rescue, fostering and re-homing are Zoliekah's. This will be a long term community project that we will be working on and more information will be posted on our Projects page. But hopefully *fingers crossed* we will be able to partner with the likes of South Canterbury Street Cats or even Cats Protection League in Christchurch to work on a trap-neuter-release program as well as looking at long term fostering and homing for caught kittens.