Q + A with Leisha Rae and Hannah Bryan of Bowl & Arrow
Bowl & Arrow was the first to bring smoothie and açaí bowls to Aotearoa New Zealand, making way for an unlikely satisfying lunch—healthy, highly nutritious food—fast. This was 2015 and there was at the time, very little in the way of health food, an observation that saw founders, Leisha Rae and Hannah Bryan literally forget about finding a ‘career’, instead, signing a lease and catering for global brands. Today, with a constant flow of heath seeking visitors at their Orakei Bay Village site, whether you want a green juice to reset or salted caramel smoothie bowl for lunch (yes, very acceptable), Bowl & Arrow offers a respite.
Tell us about your venture into the world of smoothie bowls!
Our venture began as two 23 year olds finding ourselves back home after travelling the world, and desperately missing the açaí and smoothie bowls we had tried in places like Bali, Hawaii, Aussie and Brazil - we decided Auckland needed to experience them and became Auckland's first smoothie bowl shop! What began as a weekend market stall, turned into a full time gig for us and here we are 10 years later.
You opened up shop in 2015. How have things changed since?
2015 was such a different time, it was the beginning of Instagram food photography, the time of farmers markets and food trucks, and (in my opinion) of New Zealand being quite behind other parts of the world in terms of food trends. It took us a long time to educate customers on ‘what is a smoothie bowl’, but I feel like we are really catching up now - we have served açaí bowls and matcha from day dot and just in the last 6 months we’ve seen so many new places popping up, which means more competition but in a good way, it just means theres so much more demand for it!
What inspires your menu and recipe design?
From the very beginning, we’ve been inspired by our travels and overseas ‘research’ trips, which really just means eating as many smoothies and bowls as we can for inspiration on flavour combos and items. We love following big brands such as Erewhon for whats really at the cutting edge, as well as looking at new products our suppliers are introducing, and flavours and health products we are loving. Our new menu has 4 new açaí bowls which are named after the places they are inspired by - The Bondi, Rio, Malibu, and Hawaii.
Can you tell us a few of your most popular menu items?
Our açaí is going crazy since introducing more options on the menu - with our most popular being The Hawaii, the classic ’signature’ açaí bowl with fresh strawberries, blueberries, banana, crunchy oat granola and honey, you can’t go wrong!
Our most popular smoothie bowl has and always will be the Sweetie Pie, we’ve kept this on the menu for years as I think we would cause a riot if we changed it!
How do you feel compostable packaging aligns with your brand?
Our motto is ‘do good, feel good’ and to us, the packaging has to really align with this. Our customers really do care about their environment and what waste we are adding (or not) to the world. We’ve always been about using the best quality ingredients and suppliers, not just for the food but everything else we do as well. Compostable packaging is important to us to ensure we are doing the best we can as a premium takeaway business and being as sustainable as possible.
Your custom-branded smoothie bowls and cups are a lot of fun. What surrounds a brand shapes how it speaks. What did you want your packaging to say?
We are so happy with how they’ve turned out! Our illustrations are hand drawn by our talented friend (@ashleywaredesign) and we really wanted to portray fun ‘feel-good foods’ with these. We are super transparent about our menu offering real ingredients, real fruits and vegetables and no syrups, fake flavourings or fruit juices, and wanted our packaging to be a visual representation of that.
What advice do you have for other businesses looking to reduce their environmental impact? Where are the quick wins?
As a business (as opposed to in my own personal kitchen) the biggest impact is through the things we use everyday. Our main suppliers have been so great in packaging our ingredients in environmentally friendly ways, such as 20kg bulk buckets of peanut butter (yes, thats how much we use!) that we can recycle or re-use to store other ingredients, bulk boxes of granola instead of lots of small plastic bags, and always having our commercial compost bin front and centre both out in the kitchen for food scraps, and for customers to pop their bowls and cups in. Using Ecoware for all our packaging makes it super easy to let customers know how to dispose of the packaging and that it can all be thrown away together - which is a quick win in our books.
Anything new on your menu or upcoming and noteworthy to share?
We have a brand new menu as of this month! Lots more açaí bowl options, including a DIY açaí so you can be picky and choose whatever toppings you love. More juice options, more savoury AND sweet toast options, plus some new raw slices (Bounty and Pistachio!!).
My personal faves on the new menu are the Açaí Watermelon smoothie… pure watermelon water with açaí, its sooo refreshing and addictive.
And then our Americoco - chocolate coconut water (IYKYK) with a double shot of espresso, poured over ice, equally as refreshing but just the perfect coffee for summer in my opinion!
Where you will find Bowl & Arrow
📍288 Orakei Road, Remuera, Auckland
