Franklins Bar & Eatery
What makes your venue the Best Gastropub in New Zealand?
As independent owners and Pukekohe locals we spend our time behind the bars and on the floor talking with our customers. We treat them like they are friends delivering real service, the beverage brands they want to consume and a menu that sees local produce treated with respect by experienced creative chefs. We are building a gastropub experience that genuinely caters to our local customer base and in turn they have made us part of their community.
Describe the experience your customers have at your establishment – what is your food and beverage offering and why do people come back for more?
We deliver an experience that combines that familiar feeling when you walk into a good friends home with a relaxed but attentive service style, ensuring a warm and friendly welcome, orders right first time, delivered promptly and with a smile.
Beverages are presented with care and restaurant quality plating of food. We strive to meet our diverse customer base’s needs so our beverage offer is extensive featuring quality tap and bottle beers, a broad quality local red, rose and white wine list catering to affordable quality wines by the glass to higher end premium New Zealand wines like Te Mata. We pride ourselves in an extensive range of spirit brands in key segments like Gin, Vodka, Rum and our Whisky selection is second to none. We also offer an extensive cocktail menu featuring both classics and our own creations like the Passionfruit martini.
Our food ethos revolves around the belief that a gastro-pub menu does not need to be cliched, formulaic or loaded with traditional fare. We strive to offer diversity, ethinc influences and flavours and tastes that you might find on a degustation menu but presented in a down to earth way at Gastro-pub pricing. Deliciousness does not have to break the bank and at Franklins we prove that every day.
Our food offer is influenced by our years of working in the kitchens and front of house of some of the best restaurants both here and internationally. We seek out the highest quality ingredients, have a strong understanding of flavours that surprise and delight, delivered in a style that meets our customer base. Dishes like Wagyu beef & chorizo risotto balls, Chimichurri sauce, Jalapeno aioli, pickled red onion, baby cos or Ruakaka Kingfish ceviche coconut, lime, chilli, coriander, yukari wafer are examples of typical dishes.
Tell us how you showcase NZ produce / offerings? Does your menu change with the season and how is it locally influenced. How do you accommodate allergy and dietary requirements?
We are huge on meeting the many and varied dietary requirements of a modern customer – 45 of the 48 items on our summer menu have a gluten free option and a seperate vegetrian and vegan menu. We are flexible in the kitchen to accommodate special requests or omissions. We always change our menu to match local seasonal produce and must do so, to continue to offer the very best quality we can at a price that is value for money. Where we can, we will always source locally grown produce or reared/caught protein and our menus are skewed to this. We have reared our own Wagyu, grow all our own herbs and many veggies and fruits on our own property and often customers will bring us their oversupply of citrus, herbs or other locally grown produce which we welcome and use.
What are your key points of difference and how have you managed to deliver them?
We care. We are local owners, building a brand and a reputation in Pukekohe and that matters to us and our customers. We work in the kitchen and on the floor, leading and teaching our team by example. We hold ourselves to the highest hospitality standards in everything we do and believe that those should never be compromised. We benchmark our service, breadth of beverage offer, diversity of dishes and flavours, presentation and attitude on the very best in the world. A customer should never experience less simply because they are in a gastro-pub, live in Pukekohe or aren’t paying hundreds of dollars for a meal.
Best Known for:
Extensive range of tap, beer and wines
Degustation style menu
International influences
Please describe your commitment to sustainability.
We approach sustainability seriously. We recycle all recyleable waste(cardboard, paper, glass, plastics) though recycling depots. We recyle food waste into compost. We avoid any unnecessary packaging with our deliveries and also with our presentation of products on plates. In the bar we use sugar cane straws and our takeaway containers are made from recycled products and are bio degradeable.
Please describe how you create ambience.
We believe ambience is the sum of all parts - culture, service, food and beverage offer, presentation and attitude with a liberal dose of simple, bold and tasteful interior design.
