Grey Lynn’s Cafe Saints Wants To Feed Its Locals First

Before it existed as a real place on Great North Road, Cafe Saints existed on a cardboard box. Owners Maddi and Georgia sketched out the space’s design and layout on a piece of packaging which, while sadly having disappeared since they started operating, they show me a photo of. It’s almost impressively lifelike, down to the electric blue grouting on the counter. 

“I hope it shows people that you don’t necessarily need half a million dollars to open a cafe,” Georgia tells me. “We had a lot of friends muck in and help us do it. There’s no way either of us could have afforded it without their help, so there’s a lot of people that have sandwiches for life.” That seems to come through in every step of the design; from the blue and red exterior, to the lilac walls, the masking tape sign, and the fruit crate tables. It feels like a middle finger to homogenous, mass-designed spaces, eye-catching and enticing in all of its idiosyncrasies and colour and slightly imperfect edges. It’s almost anti-algorithmic in the best possible way. 

Image Credit: Yongzhi (Yuki) Zhang | Supplied

The idea for the cafe was born when Maddi bought a Subway fridge from TradeMe. “I feel like our whole concept and everything we’ve done here has really been informed by budget and what is available to us,” explains Georgia. “So Maddi found this cheap Subway fridge on TradeMe and we thought, ok, let’s just model it off Subway’s business model.”

Both Cafe Saints and the infamous sandwich chain serve fillings between sliced bread; that is just about where the similarities end. There is no fridge full of fizzy drinks here. Instead, there are Maddi’s juices which are bright and fresh and come in a range of colours (red, orange, green), juiced to order. Sandwiches are not build-a-bear-workshop style, either. Instead, there’s a concise menu that gets altered on occasion with a few specials thrown in for good measure. There’s a deli meats sandwich which is like the Subway Italian BMT dialled up a million notches, a caesar baguette which is almost certainly going to become a cult favourite, and a lentil loaf that has become a surprise regular order. 

Image Credit: Yongzhi (Yuki) Zhang | Supplied

It reads like a concise menu that has been tried and tested and tried again for months, but that’s not exactly true. Both Maddi and Georgia laugh when I ask how long it took to pull the menu together. “I’m pretty sure we wrote the menu the day before we opened,” Maddi says. “Yeah and everyone loves sandwiches,” adds Georgia. They’re particularly easy to love when they’re this good. Georgia, who, among other things, ran her own restaurant Alta on Karangahape Road for a couple of years and worked at Mr Morris as head chef, spent a few months at Bea Bea’s to prepare for opening Cafe Saints and to fully understand the world of bread. For now, Bea Bea’s supplies the cafe as they still don’t have an oven, but the intention is to eventually bake their own baguettes, focaccia and more.

The lack of an oven dictates what they serve alongside the sandwiches, too. There are no elaborate cakes or bakes just yet, instead there’s hench slices of rocky road, a no-bake pie, tiramisu, and other goodies that can be made with a fridge, a small kitchen, and a dream. They also hope that there might be space to have their own little deli section at some stage too, with Maddi’s juices available to takeaway in bottles, homemade sauces, and more. 

Image Credit: Yongzhi (Yuki) Zhang | Supplied

Cafe Saints first opened in September, but it took me two months to finally get down and interview them. Not because I was busy (although, I have been), or because the cafe wasn’t on my radar (it was), but because Maddi and Georgia wanted to focus on servicing their local community while they found their feet. “We wanted to build that connection first, because it’s what is important to us,” Maddi explains. It’s evident in all elements of Cafe Saints, from the fact that it already feels like it has been here forever, to the comparisons it’s drawing to Seven, a cafe that closed 15 years ago but was a real community hub for this corner of Grey Lynn. It’s easy to understand why, just a couple of months in, Cafe Saints is already heading in the same direction. 

Hero Image Credit: Yongzhi (Yuki) Zhang | Supplied