Two new businesses sprout up in Barrytown

From Picton to Barrytown

Linda Grace and her wife Penny ran a successful catering business in Picton.

"When you've got your own business like that, it's 24 hours a day. You're either answering an email or a phone call or someone is ringing you at 9pm saying, 'Can I please put my order in for tomorrow?' And it just never stops. It just started to wear me down," Linda recalls.

“We came home one day and said, ‘If we move, where would we go?”

Their search for a new home landed them in Barrytown, with a population of around 200, just over a year ago.

"We didn't know Barrytown at all. We were looking at Granity maybe, or somewhere above Westport, and this little property kept popping up,” Linda recalls.

They came over for a day trip and spent half an hour looking at the house – a 100 plus year-old stable converted to a house.

“Just walked in and said this will do us,” Linda says. "It's such a beautiful spot … we're less than a kilometre from the ocean. We have a sunset that's unbelievable every night, even in the rain.”

The move has given birth to two new ventures: Select Catering and Select Seeds.

“The ‘select’ is so that we can choose, after being busy caterers for the last 25 years. My wife tells me that I have to choose to be not so busy,” Linda explains.

“As far as catering is concerned, I can pretty much do anything ... I've done it for so long now that if someone wants something, we can put it together for them.”

Through Select Catering, Linda is also filling a gap in the market making packed lunches for people doing the Paparoa Track and West Coast Wilderness Trail.

“I figured if we can get ten a day through the summer, it's a great little side income and if we can get 100 a day it's a bonus,” Linda laughs.

Her other business. Select Seeds stems from one of her hobbies. Linda makes a bespoke selection of hand roasted seeds that compliment a large variety of savoury and sweet foods. The Select Seed range includes: just roasted, smoked and roasted, simply spicy, and sweet roasted.

The sweet roasted mix for example is a blend of cinnamon, cardamom, cacao powder, natural raw sugar, maple syrup added to sunflower seeds, cashews, pistachio, almonds, chia seeds, coconut chips and shredded coconut. It has found a myriad of fans, including a teenager who, as Linda notes, "literally sucks the product out of the bag.”

For those curious to sample these delectable mixes, Select Seeds products are available on-line at www.selectseeds.nz, and for packed lunches to platters check out Select Catering on www.selectcatering.nz