Donald and Lisa Templeton of Denheath. Photo / Denheath
Donald and Lisa Templeton of Denheath. Photo / Denheath
A small Timaru-based food manufacturer is a big hit with global retailer Costco Wholesale.
Denheath Desserts is selling millions of its custard squares in the retailer’s stores, displaying the Southern Alps flanked by pristine dairy country on its packaging in Australasia and previously Asia.
“My mother had told me shewanted us to take the custard square recipe and make Denheath a New Zealand household brand as well as selling internationally,” said Lisa Templeton, co-owner of the business with her husband Donald.
Now she says the family-owned manufacturer has sold its products in more than 53 Costco outlets in NZ, Australia, Korea and Japan.
It pulled out of Asia after communications broke down during Covid when it had to upgrade to meet dairy export standards.
In 2019, when Costco Wholesale Westgate was being planned, the retailer’s managing director Patrick Noone said the chain wanted to buy and distribute more New Zealand goods to its 94 million member shoppers.
Templeton says Denheath was “lucky” in 2013 to forge into Costco Australia when the American-headquartered giant had only a few stores across the Tasman and was yet to open here.
Denheath Desserts in Costco Wholesale Westgate.
The Templetons learned how the influential chain was planning to promote NZ food products on a roadshow via NZ Trade & Enterprise, she recalled. So they approached Costco, asking if it might be interested in selling Denheath Desserts.
The relationship flourished from there, to the point the manufacturing base in one of Timaru’s older areas on Mill St needed upgrading to meet the Ministry for Primary Industries’ dairy product export manufacturing standards.
All went so well that the Timaruvians were soon distributing entire container loads of their squares through Australasia and Asia.
Wrapped custard squares, ready to go into boxes and into Costco coolers. Photo / Denheath Desserts
“When Costco was coming to New Zealand, the new buyer for Australia and New Zealand remembered us and she asked us to go up to Auckland for a cup of coffee. So we did,” she recalls.
And the relationship has grown ever since.
Asked what difference the Costco supply agreements had made to Denheath, musician and co-owner Donald Templeton said: “The most encouraging thing about it is that we now have an international market for a product that started in a small rural township. We’ve grown and the future prospects look even brighter.”
Denheath says its squares are “as Kiwi as alpine ranges, glacier-fed lakes and little men with hairy feet”.
They also make profiteroles and cheesecakes. As for the name, it came from Denheath House - a country café at the old post office in sleepy little Pleasant Point, South Canterbury.
That was the birthplace of the uniquely different, light and fluffy Denheath Custard Square.
The original owners of the cafe where the squares were sold were Dennis Knight and his potter wife Heather, hence the name Denheath. Lisa Templeton worked in the Knights’ arts and craft shop in Pleasant Point when she was at secondary school.
Her mother Carol thought Denheath House was worth buying for Heather Knight’s custard square.
“My dad Peter Rutland wasn’t so sure but in 1996 my parents bought Denheath House, just so she could get her hands on the very special custard square. If we were corporate enough ever to write a mission statement, achieving my mother’s dream would be it,” Lisa Templeton concludes.
Anne Gibson has been the Herald’s property editor for 23 years, has won many awards, written books and covered property extensively here and overseas.
