A new Auckland café is offering a unique way to buy your morning coffee.
Located along the pedestrianised Fort St in Auckland’s CBD, Jakku Café accepts trade-ins of car parts, scrap metal, and other once-useful junk for a bite to eat and a glass of your favourite beverage.
Brain child of Swedish-born Unkar Plutt, Jakku Café is the first café in New Zealand to adopt a parts-for-food payment model rather than the traditional cash, EFTPOS or credit card payment.
Plutt says the inspiration for Jakku Café came from his Swedish roots.
“Back home in Sweden, everyone really looks out for the environment."
"There are places like Jakku Café all over Stockholm. For me, bringing this business model over to New Zealand was a no brainer.”
“I looked at all the cafés in the area and was surprised no one was offering a similar café experience.”
When asked whether the traded-in machine parts alone would cover the cost of the café’s upkeep, Plutt was not concerned.
“There’s a lot of money to be made from second hand parts – they have so much value but no one knows what to do with them.”
No one, except the team at Jakku Café.
“At Jakku Café, we are doing our part to help the environment.
We upcycle all these second hand parts into new creations to sell on Trade Me and on our website. They’re actually proving quite popular!”
Brendon Rice, president of the NZ Café’s Association is hopeful that more café’s will start popping up with a similar style of business.
“Offering portions of food in exchange for a customer’s unwanted junk is genius! I really think this has the potential to disrupt the café industry completely.”
“More and more often we see innovative and modern cafes crop up throughout New Zealand.”
“We are truly going through a food revolution right now – it’s such an exciting time to be alive!”
