For Motueka parents Josiah and Rachel Smits, food is a family affair. In peak summer, every morning they make 700 gourmet doughnuts from scratch and everyone does their part helping run the family restaurant, The Smoking Barrel.
Vienna Rose, 10, covers promotions, roller-skating in a chicken suit to drum up attention.
Roman, eight, is always eager to lend a hand waiting tables, can cook better than most adults and is desperate to follow his dad into the hospitality game.
Rachel, 39, pitches in wherever needed and keeps things running behind the scenes while caring for baby Aubrey, one, while Josiah, 34, is king of the kitchen.
His smoked meats and American BBQ lunches have a dedicated local fanbase, but it’s the delicious and unexpected doughnut creations that have people queueing around the corner, and even planning their entire holidays around trying one.
Year round from their “tiny shoe box” bake room, with the help of just one other baker, Josiah makes hundreds of doughnuts – and at the height of summer, they only just keep up with demand.
The busy baker has always loved pushing the boundaries with food and one of his most popular flavours is cheeseburger, where every component – patty, sauce, cheese, pickle and all – are cooked inside the doughnut.
The cheeseburger reinvented!
“The savoury ones always take a little bit of coaxing people over the line because they just can’t quite get their heads around a savoury doughnut,” tells Josiah. “I remember when an older guy came in asking for a cheese scone. I convinced him to try a cheeseburger doughnut and he came back the next day to tell me it was the best thing he’d ever eaten and ordered two more!”
Smiling widely, Josiah says these are the moments he lives for. “Here’s this 85-year-old guy who has eaten everything and anything he wanted to in life, and he’s come across something new that I made.”
Bacon and eggs benedict is another favourite doughnut flavour and there are plenty of mouth-watering sweet options too.
For Josiah, owning a restaurant has always been the dream, and together with Rachel they’ve firmly cemented The Smoking Barrel as a local icon. But he confesses they were almost too scared to try.
“Seeing how difficult it was and how much of a toll it took on the family lives of some owners, I almost didn’t go for it.
“But we thought, ‘This is our opportunity to have a crack and if it doesn’t work out, at least we had a shot at it,'” explains Josiah, who’s honest about the impact the hospitality business has had on his family.
Some weeks, he’s worked 100 hours-plus, and Rachel says it’s not uncommon to hear him come home and creep into bed after midnight before sneaking out again in the early hours to start baking. “At the worst of times, he would have an hour-and-a-half sleep in the middle of the night, then maybe another hour-and-a-half sleep in the middle of the day,” she shares.
There have also been many nights in the past six years where the kids have curled up and fallen asleep in a booth at the eatery.
Yummy! Everyone has a favourite flavour.
The whole family is committed to making the dream work, and Josiah and Rachel believe their children are learning valuable lessons along the way.
“We’ve always taught them to work hard and that things aren’t handed to you. Our little champ Vienna has her first proper job at The Smoking Barrel, racing up and down in a chicken suit on roller skates holding a $1 wings sign,” Rachel says proudly.
“And our son is in the kitchen watching, learning and cooking any chance he gets. He’s always telling us he wants to take orders and wait tables too.”
Vienna and Roman regularly make their own “restaurants” at home, and love helping Josiah dream up new doughnut flavours.
On the sales side, Vienna and her friend are slick chicks.
Food has played such an integral role in the family’s story that Rachel says Josiah’s sourdough bread is responsible for their relationship. “I was working nights at a bakery, and Jo brought me a coffee and a loaf of bread he’d made himself and won my heart,” laughs Rachel, who was first introduced to Josiah by mutual friends in 2009.
Nearly 14 years on, they’re in a notoriously stressful industry, but the pair are an unbreakable team together, both in the shop and at home.
“Not a lot of people would be okay with the hours I pull, but it’s my dream and Rachel has stuck by me,” shares Josiah. “I consider myself extremely lucky.
“There have been times where I felt like it’s all too much and, in those moments, Rachel is there to encourage me and vice-versa when she’s struggling. We always pick each other up and I’m really proud of what we’ve achieved together.”
