Help to get a milk Moustache on the road

Deanna Yang wants to tour the country with her wares. Photo / Doug Sherring

The owner of Lorde's favourite milkshake bar won't be crying over spilt milk when her shop closes this year.

Instead, Moustache Milk and Cookie Bar owner Deanna Yang has bought a bus and plans to go down a different road to keep her childhood dream alive.

Yang, who counts Lorde as a regular customer, is driving a Pledge Me crowd-sourcing campaign to raise $80,000 and save Moustache.

And she is counting on fans of her freshly baked cookies and mouth-watering shakes who flock to the hip Wellesley St, Auckland, bar to dig deep as circumstances beyond her control force her to reinvent the business she launched two years ago.

Yang said the money was to strip, restore and convert a Bedford bus into a milk and cookie bar on wheels.

Over a few weeks, donors had pledged just under $40,000 if the total was met by an April 17 deadline.

"When I opened Moustache, a lot of people told me it was a silly idea but I went for it anyway," she said.

"The bus is also an act of doing something out of left field and pursuing a dream that isn't so conventional.

"We have so many fans coming from outside Auckland to visit the shop I thought, 'Why not build a big bus and take Moustache to customers who can't get to us'?"

The Pledge Me page says the shop will close "due to unexpected events outside our control".

In September, Yang said the shop's future in central Auckland was at risk because of soaring rents.

It sparked an online campaign to save Moustache, with chart-topper Lorde posting on Instagram: "Aucklanders — if you've been to moustache (the awesome milkshake/cookie place by the civic) you'll know how hard these people work and how much it would suck if they had to close. Sign this petition and hope for the best (this is partly a selfish post because i go there for peanut butter+nutella milkshakes EVERY WEEK."

Click here for the Pledge Me page and support Moustache.