The History of Hello Audrey

It all started when…

Hello Audrey was established by Justine & Bill Shera, who live in Taranaki. In 2015 Justine decided she wanted a cute caravan to sell her cupcakes from. During some research, Justine fell in love with a photo of a Caravan Bar in the US on Pinterest and thought this would be amazing in Taranaki. 

After some quick googling revealed that there was only one other Caravan Bar in New Zealand at the time, the idea quickly changed from selling cakes – to being a full service caravan bar.

Justine & Bill searched all over New Zealand to find the right caravan to retrofit, finally, after 9 months, they found a beautiful 1970 Zephyr in Upper Hutt.  On the drive home, she was named Audrey, after Audrey Hepburn – a broad with a lot of class, elegance and sass.

Hello Audrey was launched in October 2015 and booked 11 weddings in the summer 2016.  The first season was a huge success and was quickly booked out the following summer, a year in advance, with 17 weddings in 2017.

In 2018 Hello Audrey expanded to add more bars to handle the demand (3 x boutique bars) and booked 25 weddings for both the summer of 2018., along with the 2019 season booking 25 weddings.

In April 2019 Justine & Bill decided they needed to have more time in their weekends for their son and they started the process of building their dream home, they decided to sell Hello Audrey…..

My Husband Dejay, a Health & Safety Advisor, works at the District Council with Bill. In casual conversation, the topic of selling the business was discussed. My husband came home with the fabulous idea to purchase Hello Audrey, for the fun of it and for something positive for me get to stuck into. I am a Registered Nurse, and I absolutely love it, BUT I want to continue to love it for the rest of my working life; and I believe because it is a very draining profession, you need to have balance. I was very reluctant at first, to purchase the business; my husband often has grand ideas, he is such a goal getter. Sometimes they come to life and other times the ideas fizzle away. So of course I felt like this was another grand idea. I already followed Hello Audrey on Instagram and instantly I was thinking ‘no way could I ever own an incredible business like that’. Dejay was very encouraging of me and would remind me how organised I am, how much I love weddings, and how much fun I would have; plus having a better balance in my working life.

All of a sudden we were visiting Audrey, I absolutely LOVED her. But I still had the feelings of; ‘this is too good to be true’. We decided to do some research and financial planning, which led to putting an offer in. We put forward the best we could because we knew this business was worthy; it had been built from ground up and it had a lot love, time and energy put into it. It had a great reputation here in Taranaki.

When we got the word that our offer was accepted we were blown away. The ‘too good to be true’ feeling was wrong. Hello Audrey was ours.

Life is about taking risks. Life is short, but it is also so long, you can achieve so much in your life, you can change your path however many times you like. If taking a risk pays off, that is great; if it doesn’t, that is fine too. Because risks are experience, and life is for living, learning and having fun.

We are blessed to be on this Journey. We are here to continue an excellent service from a well established business. We are here to have fun and create memories. Watch this space.

Adehl & Dejay x