MARTIN DE RUYTER/STUFF
Pablo Salas with his mobile La Planta Café: “My knowledge, my skills, my values and my morals are actually here.”
Pablo Salas has worked as a DJ, handyman, barista, still works as a gardener and runs his own events, business and dance school.
In his native Chile, he worked in IT, repairing computers, telephones and printers.
He combines all his experience in his latest venture, a Latin-themed plant-based food truck that sells hot and cold drinks and foods such as alfajores, pies and empanadas made according to South American recipes.
La Planta Café is his passion project. Parked behind the Uplift Float Center on Nelson’s Vanguard St, the arrangement includes furniture made from pallets. He also uses non-disposable cups that can be used by making a deposit or using the Again Again app.
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Customers can also bring their own storage cups.
Salas first came to New Zealand in 2013 with his then-girlfriend.
“I didn’t know where New Zealand was, I had to look it up on Google,” he admits.
“I saw Mordor and all that stuff, and then I saw a picture of Abel Tasman and I thought, ‘Yeah, I want to go there.'”
After his first year and a half in Aotearoa, Salas left for Australia where he did a Diploma of Hospitality and worked at events such as Formula 1 and the Australian Open tennis tournament in Melbourne.
There he met his Kiwi wife Nikki and the couple decided to move to New Zealand after getting married in Chile.
He likes the warmth of the people here: “Even though it’s a different culture, I think I’ve found people who are similar.”
During his first stay on our coasts, he lived in Paihia and met people of the Ngāpuhi, who taught him some reo.
Catherine Hubbard
Pablo Salas and his food truck La Planta Cafe at the Matariki Festival in Nelson.
“I feel very close to them,” he says.
He also likes New Zealand’s multiculturalism, meeting people from countries like France and Italy, the landscapes and the fact that we “mostly respect nature”.
“Although you have something to complain about everywhere, compared to where I used to live, here is paradise in a sense.”
Salas has been vegan since 2017 because he says he understood the “ethical and moral values” behind it in terms of not exploiting animals, rather than for health reasons.
The cafe is “Latino, plant-based, organic and eco-friendly”.
“My knowledge, my skills, my values and my morals are actually here,” Salas says.
Salas has worked in cafes, hotels and restaurants for years, from cleaning the bathrooms to the front of the house: “almost every position to assistant manager”.
It was while helping a friend with a Saturday food truck when the vision of his new venture became clear to him.
“It wasn’t as hard as I thought… It felt natural. I felt comfortable. So I was like, ‘Yeah, now’s the time’.”
Salas hopes the truck, combined with gardening, will allow him to have flexible hours to be with his family, as his wife Nikki will have the couple’s first child in late November.
The mobile café is open in winter from Wednesday to Friday from 07:00 to 12:30.