How a Birkenhead couple grew a neighbouring dining empire.
Four businesses, 41 staff, three kids. Hospitality husband and wife duo Sarah and Jordan MacDonald have a lot on their plates.
But visiting the pair at Birkenhead’s Hinemoa St, where they operate cafe Duo, restaurant Osteria Uno, wine bar Bon
Pinard and newly opened wine shop Hinemoa St Cellars, you don’t get the sense the pair have bitten off more than they can chew.
“Nothing’s a drama, nothing’s too hard,” chef Jordan says.
“We’ve always said if we have the time and ingredients, we’ll do it.”
Sarah says the key to their success is prioritising simplicity, “yum food, easy service, happy lives”.
“I feel like it’s not that hard – you just need to copy and paste yourself about 25 times.”
The couple’s newest business, Hinemoa St Cellar, opened in December. Photo / Babiche Martens
The pair do appear to be taking over, one Hinemoa St storefront at a time.
The couple opened Duo in March 2022, and seven months later the embroidery shop next door closed. The opportunity was too tempting for the pair who you might recognise from their time at Culprit, Little Culprit, Lowbrow and Nook. Osteria Uno entered the world in October.
Sarah says Jordan is always looking for solutions to problems. In this case, what else could they add to the neighbourhood? “Pasta-focused Italian. High quality but affordable and approachable.
“The way he convinced me to expand initially was, ‘if we have two restaurants there’ll be more storage’. There’s no more storage.”
When one door opens, so do new pinch points, but Jordan remains unflappable.
“When we first opened Osteria Uno it was too busy, a two or three hour wait for a table, there was nowhere for people to wait,” Sarah explains.
“Then this space just down the road came up and Jordan was like ‘we could have a wine bar where everyone could wait’.”
Bon Pinard in Birkenhead sits alongside sister restaurants Uno and Duo. Photo / Babiche Martens.
Said wine bar, the European-styled Bon Pinard, opened in mid-2024, built as a waiting room.
“But it’s taken on an identity of its own – full of people that are choosing it as the destination,” Jordan says.
The pair are well practised in the art of the pivot. Duo was originally conceived as an evening establishment but a lengthy delay in liquor licensing saw them adjust circadian rhythms.
It was the right call. Another pivot, the addition of neighbourhood supper clubs has proved particularly successful, attracting first-timers and luring locals back in.
It’s little wonder, given the menu offers three courses for $60. Fish crudo, beef carpaccio, steak frites, panna cotta. “We don’t skimp in any way,” Sarah says.
For Valentine’s Day, they’re offering a decadent $145pp menu with oysters, crayfish, caviar, scallops, wagyu and chocolate.
It’s a reflection of the MacDonalds’ ethos: “We just want to add value to the neighbourhood,” Jordan explains.
“We have Australian wagyu steaks on the menu. In a normal restaurant, they would be $99; we’re selling it for $55. We eat some margin,” he explains.
“Some items on the menu we look at a dollar not a percentage. They’re almost loss leaders but that dish will probably be the highlight of the customer’s meal – the thing that they come back again for and will get lots of other stuff on the menu that makes money.”
Mafaldine, beef cheek, shiitake, egg yolk on the menu at Osteria Uno. Photo / Babiche Martens
Sarah says the abundant approach is reflective of Jordan’s self-sacrificing nature spilling into work.
“He wants to be generous even if it’s at our own sacrifice,” she says.
Jordan insists it pays off long term.
He also counters that, actually, the pair approach their business somewhat selfishly – rather than solely serving the community, they’re building places they’d want to frequent.
“I was here last night straight from the pools in my jandals,” Sarah says. “At the next table, people were celebrating their anniversary. It adds to the vibe. There’s really no pressure.”
There’s no pressure to conform to one style of food either.
“It is just food that we want to eat,” Jordan says, simply.
“With Duo we said it’s bistro style – modern New Zealand food – which is a bit of a cop out because we can draw from anywhere in the world. Modern NZ doesn’t really have a food identity, apart from being a melting pot.”
The raw fish on toast on the day menu at Duo. Photo / Babiche Martens
Influences come from far and near. The dish that put them on the map, Duo’s raw fish on toast, is another example of their community connections.
“It was designed the night before we opened, based on a raw fish dish our friend Les from Apero had on at the time,” Sarah says.
“At 2am I was like, ‘why don’t we just do an epic ceviche on toast’?”
It’s an example of how the pair generally collaborate.
“I’ll say a random idea, he’ll say ‘no that’s not going to work’, and I say ‘yeah, well, make it work, figure it out’,” Sarah says, with a laugh.
She’s done a fair bit of figuring it out, too. A chef herself, Sarah moved to handling the front of house when they opened, because she had to.
“It made sense that one should be on the floor, one should be in the kitchen – at the time Jordan was much more of the behind the scenes in the kitchen chef, he definitely didn’t talk to customers as much.
“I did it and was scared shitless; I’d been a chef for six years but now I love it. You’re forced to be happy. When you’re back of house and something goes wrong, everyone gets sucked into the manic depressive s*** – on the floor, you have to be happy.”
Sarah now handles the front of house. Photo / Babiche Martens.
As they enter their fifth year operating on Hinemoa St, have they found a sustainable rhythm? Opinions differ.
In Jordan’s eyes their pace is sustainable, but it’s “a lot more work than it used to be”.
“Lots of pivoting, manoeuvring, coming up with new promotions and ways to advertise yourself without appearing to be desperate, without doing things that we don’t align with or devalue your brand.”
Sarah says, “it’s okay right now”, but then again, “it’s always okay right now”.
Ensuring it stays that way though, takes constant work.
“You definitely have to be active in the restaurant to know what’s going on,” Jordan agrees. “You have to be here in order to realise, oh crap, Tuesdays are dead, what do we need to do?”
Osteria Uno’s $20 rigatoni Tuesdays are now their third busiest trade day of the week; sometimes it’s the busiest, and they turn the restaurant over fully twice.
The omnipresence pays dividends other than financial.
“That is really highly valued by the staff and the community. Not just being the face of it, but doing it.”
They’ve won over the locals, but they’ve been won over, too. They admittedly weren’t overly familiar with Birkenhead when they opened, but have now moved their family into the suburb and are fully ensconced in the area.
“It sounds cheesy, but our regulars are some of our best friends now,” Sarah says.
Jordan helms the kitchens. Photo / Babiche Martens
The couple still have a small, silent partnership in inner-city restaurant Culprit, but neighbourhood dining is their full focus.
“We knew when we left the city we wanted to get into a neighbourhood, we didn’t know or care what neighbourhood, we looked at Avondale too,” Sarah explains. “We really just lucked out that this area is so lovely. I don’t think we would have opened as many businesses anywhere else.”
They both feel like neighbourhood eateries are the way of the future – in Auckland at least.
The suburbs have their drawbacks – attracting staff for one – but it evens out.
“I feel like people like the ease of being able to walk up the road and walk home. It’s easy to bring the kids up for a 5 o’clock dinner and you don’t need to worry about parking,” Sarah says.
Independent ownership suits neighbourhoods too; the city is an eating arena increasingly dominated by hospitality groups.
“Those groups, their venues are so big that they’re not really even [comparable],” Jordan says.
“They have a formula, and it works – they can do the big groups because they do massive venues, 300sq m. That’s their business model. Duo is 60sq m, Uno is 80sq m, our wine shop’s 20sq m, the wine bar is maybe 50. We’re way smaller.”
The small charm that attracts customers translates into business relationships.
“There’s not a huge difference in purchasing power between us and them, because we develop relationships with our suppliers,” Jordan insists.
“They get good deals because they’re massive, but we have good relationships. Margins are so tight on suppliers at the moment anyway that there’s not really any better deals to be had.
“Groups are good, they employ lots of people and keep the majority of the population happy, they’re feeding a purpose, but they’re not our style.”
Husband and wife team Jordan and Sarah MacDonald own and operate Duo, Osteria Uno, Bon Pinard and Hinemoa St Cellar in Birkenhead. Photo / Babiche Martens
Keeping a business healthy is one thing, keeping a relationship strong is another.
Sarah thinks a major reason the couple can endure the intensity is the fact they’ve never known any different.
“We started cooking together, at Fed Deli, we’ve only ever been involved in each other that much,” she says.
“We’ve got three awesome kids that, yes, make it even more stressful, so when you’re out of work, you’re still talking about work, that’s our life. It’s forever going to be our life, I imagine.
“That’s us. We both care so much about our businesses, about each other, about all the things in our life that it works. We try not to fight it.”
Trying not to fight is their goal for the foreseeable.
“No more restaurants or businesses,” Sarah says, turning to face her husband. “Focus on what we’ve got and keep everyone happy.”
“Yes, boss,” Jordan says, with a smile.
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