Coromandel’s smoking family

Coromandel’s aquaculture creates local market sales of more than $30million a year and the Coromandel Smoking Company is one of those local businesses thriving in the sector. 

It’s been around for more than 20 years, and it serves up some of the freshest local seafood you’ll find in the Coromandel to people who often travel there especially for the smoked delicacies. 

The Coromandel Smoking Co started in 1997 and has had a total of four owners since. Today it’s run by Kevin and Bronwyn Verner along with their five staff members. 

“People love that we use local mussels and other seafood,” Bronwyn said. 

“We have a lot of customers coming through on holiday…people who’ve been camping here for years and years. 

“This place has been around for a long time. Each owner before us has added something – we are carrying on all their good ideas.” 

Aquaculture is a major player in Coromandel’s economy and the Verners are happy to be part of it. 

“Mussel farming employs a lot of people,” Kevin said. 

“If they moved the loading and unloading away it would be pretty hard on the town. The jobs that are here are to do with aquaculture or tourism.” 

The couple bought the company in 2010. 

“We were dairy farmers for 20 years and we bought a place up here,” Kevin said. 

“We were going in and out doing relief farm management. Then we got to a point when we just decided we wanted to stay here and we saw this on the market and thought ‘why not?’.” 

He said they loved the area and while having a business was a means to an end, they loved running it. 

Bronwyn said they had both their kids working there at one stage. 

“We like the family atmosphere; we’re definitely hands on, we work with the team. 

“It’s been a good challenge because we knew nothing about before we bought into it,” she said. 

Kevin said it always surprised him when people travelled to Coromandel simply to get some of their smoked goods. 

“We get lots of people in the shop who say they came up specially.” 

He said there had recently been a seafood festival in Coromandel town and the stalls ran out of seafood after about an hour. 

“Our shop got absolutely hammered because we had the only seafood left in town,” he said. 

Bronwyn said that was really good for business and they even managed to snag a new customer who called back later in the week. 

“A guy rang up the other day asking if we could send some stuff to his mum in Wellington.” 

She said he spent $100 on seafood for his mum for a Mother’s Day present. 

“He came in when the festival was on, it was the first time he’d been in here and he thought it was all really fantastic and now he’s spent a whole lot of money on his mum. 

“I thought that was fantastic,” she said. 

The couple love the job and after eight years are still very much part of the daily ins and outs of running the business. 

“Bronwyn runs the fish factory, the shop and the office,” Kevin said. 

“I do the other side of financials and mussel smoking and the fish cutting part.” 

All their mussels and oysters are locally sourced, relying on local mussel and oyster farms to bring in their supply. Mussels are their main product. 

“We do 30 sacks of mussels a week and there’s 25kg in each sack,” Bronwyn said. 

The company has smoked its seafood the same way since it opened – with natural manuka and tea tree wood chips. 

“It’s tried and true, it does a good job. There’s no great secret to it, it just works,” Kevin said. 

During the winter months, the couple find they aren’t as busy as the bustling summer season so they wholesale their products to Auckland, New Plymouth and Hamilton. They also have a website you can visit here to order any of their delicious seafood products and have them delivered straight to your door. 

While you're here, don't forget to search through the Waikato Story's Toolkit to see if there is anything you can use for your business! You’ll find plenty of photos of the stunning Coromandel, as well as an infographic of statistics about aquaculture in the region all free for you to use.