Viv's Kitchen in Sanson Manawatū sold its 200,000th cream horn on Friday morning.
The cafe is well known for the cone-shaped pastries and in recent years its popularity has skyrocketed.
Viv Withers, who co-owns the kitchen with her husband Kevan, says the café has been booming.
“It’s been great, really good, even since we came back out of lockdown. I think people were waiting for a fix because it’s just skyrocketed again.
Cream horns from Viv's Kitchen Photo: Viv's Kitchen
“On Queen’s Birthday Saturday we sold 347 and our biggest record for a day was 367, which was on the day we sold the 100,000.”
A cream horn is a pastry shell, formed around a metal mould filled with patisserie jams and cream.
It’s a labour-intensive exercise, Viv told Jesse Mulligan.
“There’s a lot of work goes into them.
“Louisa yesterday spent all day just cutting strips of pastry rolling cream horns and she did just over 400 that was her on her own for the day.”
The 200,000th horn was sold to “a lovely lady” from Pahiatua, Viv says.
“She was heading over to Whanganui to her hairdressers and she had her daughter with her so they called in to buy some cream horns
“She was rather gobsmacked when she did get the prize because she thought the prize would be a free cream horn.”
In fact, she has won a mystery all expenses paid break for two.
The most popular filling is raspberry, Viv says.
“Raspberry is the traditional one and we introduced other flavours – boysenberry, passion fruit, caramel - and when we came back out of lockdown we introduced lemon and chocolate.
“The traditional ones never had flavouring in them it was just a little blob of raspberry on the end of the cream.”
The café sells the horns for $4.90 and Viv says the 300,000th could be just around the corner.
“It took us four years to get to the first 100,000 but only just over 2 years to get to the next 100,000.
“We’re very popular for a little, weeny place.”
