MAGNA — Don Oliphant's business card depicts a kiwi and a kangaroo, wildlife indigenous to New Zealand and Australia.
But he doesn't deal in exotic animals. Rather, he's a baker, cooking up a culinary niche with "Down Under" meat pies, New Zealand-style fish and chips and "Kiwi" specialty sweets.
True, this Maori/Scottish immigrant from New Zealand's north island is a long way from home. But he's created an island for himself here called the Kiwi Bakery.
His is an unusual — albeit struggling — business he started in Kearns, which now operates out of a small storefront in the old downtown section of Magna.
Oliphant, 50, thinks of himself as a survivor, someone with dreams of selling meat pies in every gas station in Utah.
"These things will beat a burrito any time," he says.
Oliphant was born in Hamilton, a city about the size of West Valley and Magna combined. He was raised on meat pies for school lunch, fish and chips on Fridays and the sport of rugby in his spare time.
With the workings of Kennecott Utah Copper now just outside his front door, Oliphant has combined his love of food and rugby into one place.
On the walls at 8963 W. 2700 South are old rugby jerseys. Lamingtons — yellow cakes dipped in chocolate sauce and rolled in coconut — and potato beef pies share space under glass.
At one of two tables out front, Oliphant talks about his slow rise into the baking world while he waits out a slow Monday after Thanksgiving — typically a down time after the biggest food holiday of the year.
He was not long out of high school when he embarked on a five-year baker's apprenticeship in Christchurch, on the south island of New Zealand. His first foray into the entrepreneurial world was buying loads of baseball caps in the United States and selling them for a tidy profit back in New Zealand.
Oliphant considered his baking skills something to fall back on in those days. Now, it's his life.
Oliphant dove headlong into baking in 1997, when he set up shop in a "hole in the wall" near 5400 South and 4000 West. Without the ability to do anything on a large scale, he lasted only 18 months.
He followed a business prospect to San Diego but wound up back in Utah. Oliphant went to work for Olson's Bakery in Magna and soon took over the lease. He started the Kiwi Bakery in August 2001.
Kiwi Bakery's offerings include Oliphant's homemade sausage rolls, steak and cheese pies, Cornish pastries, vanilla slices, English trifles, Napoleon squares and — a favorite among his Polynesian customers — sweet pani popo (coconut bars).
Oliphant makes his own tartar sauce for the fish and chips he serves up for lunch and dinner, Wednesday through Friday and on Saturdays, 2 p.m. to 7 p.m. New Zealanders who have tasted his fish say, "Donny, this is better than at home." The "chips," by the way, are fries.
"I love what I do," he says. "It can be frustrating. . . . I know I have something that's unique, that people don't know about, that you can't get anywhere else."
E-mail: sspeckman@desnews.com