New Rotorua cafe will operate fully in te reo Māori

A new Rotorua cafe will ask customers to speak only te reo Māori when they walk in the doors.

Rumaki Cafe, on Fenton Street, has made the call to go full Māori immersion when they open at the end of July. Customers will be supported to give te reo a go – English won’t be spoken.

Cafe director Miraka Davies told RNZ’s Checkpoint they will have a system of visual cues that will customers to let staff know their level of reo.

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“As you walk through the door, there’ll be a system that you can self-identify your level of reo capability so that’s a signal, a visual signal to both to other customers and to our kaimahi of how to interact with you,” she explained.

“…. We’ll use a lot of hand actions to spell things out and there will be QR codes everywhere …. [that will] take you to a place where you can push play on a prerecorded sentence of how to order, say, your flat white.

“And then you’ve done it. You’ve used te reo Maori to order your coffee.”

Davies said the cafe doesn’t want to exclude anyone, it was a space to help speakers continue their te reo journey, but she recognised the environment might not be for everyone.

“There’s no English spoken here. It makes us stay brave to use our language and really lock it in and continue to grow and develop. So, that is not about exclusion. That is about helping us to achieve our goals.

“Now, if you don’t want to be in an environment like that, that’s OK. You don’t have to come. Nobody’s forcing you. You can get your coffee somewhere else. We will not be offended.”

Davies didn’t grow up speaking te reo Māori. She spent years studying the language at university and now considers herself conversational, but not fluent. She wanted more places to practise and listen – where “this language is normalised”.

“All of our kaimahi, all of our staff, that we’re currently recruiting right now, we are hiring people who are going to be making coffees and preparing food and cleaning tables,” Davies said.

“But their main role is to korero and to support. So we’re not just hiring people who are going to hide in the kitchen. There’s going to be lots of opportunities for interaction.

“… It’s a place that is as Māori as walking into a marae.”

Tiakarete wera (Hot chocolate)