Changing Faces: Black Dog Café

More than 20 years in the hospitality industry has reinforced in Mark Seton’s mind the importance of providing customers with consistently good food, coffee and service.

Mark and his partner Billie are the new owner/operators of Black Dog Café in Matakana.

“Matakana is obviously growing, but it is still quite a tight-knit community in many ways,” Mark says. “We can see that the locals are going to be the backbone of our business and we’re going to do our best to look after them.”

The couple’s dedication to the job includes setting the alarm clock for 2am or 3am seven days a week and then heading for the café to be ready to start the day’s baking.

Billie insists on everything being baked fresh daily, starting with the brioche and then moving onto the scones, scrolls and muffins.

“We take a lot of pride in what we do and there’s nothing better than getting great customer feedback,” she says. “It makes the early mornings all worthwhile.”

While Mark started his working life in the filtration and pumping industry, he soon gravitated to hospitality and opened the first two Muffin Breaks in NZ – one in the

Downtown shopping centre and the other in Milford. At one stage, he was running three cafes in Auckland, employing 100 staff.

More recently, he has been living and working in Papamoa where Billie comes from.

“We decided to move north at the suggestion of friends,” Mark says. “Billie’s new to the area, but I remember coming up for the mullet boat races at Leigh and I did a bit of holiday work for Roger Clark, planting nashi pear trees at Omaha years ago.”

The couple say they have plans to make some changes to the outside dining area and have already updated the inside décor, but otherwise the focus will remain on the food and coffee.