Auckland Café Owner Creates 'Third Space' That Won't Quit

Claire Park didn't plan to become Auckland's most dedicated café owner, but three years in, she's working 70-hour weeks to protect something her community can't afford to lose.

Her tiny Mt Eden café, Ditto, has become what she calls a "third space." It's not home, not work, but somewhere people come to slow down and just exist.

Park designed the café like someone's living room. A big communal table anchors the space, surrounded by books and trinkets from her travels. The most borrowed book? "Surrounded by Idiots," a psychology read that sparks conversations between strangers.

But the real treasure sits in the middle of that table. A red notebook serves as Café Ditto's guest book, where customers scribble thoughts, doodles, and messages to each other. They've filled seven books since 2023.

The Korean Kiwi designer opened Ditto after running a café in Seoul during Covid. When she moved back to Auckland's Mt Eden neighborhood where she grew up, she noticed something missing: nowhere to gather that wasn't a bar or restaurant.

So she created it herself. The café opens at 8am seven days a week, with late nights until 9pm three times weekly. People come to read, crochet, draw, and write. Some stay for hours over a single matcha latte.

Park makes that possible by running a design business on the side. Between branding work and photography gigs, she subsidizes the café's razor-thin margins. It's exhausting, but her regulars keep thanking her for not closing like so many others have.

The economy has made every decision harder. Dairy prices climbed. Coffee beans cost more. She's constantly calculating what costs to absorb and what to pass along to customers who are already spending less.

Park simplified the menu drastically. Now she bakes chocolate chunk cookies herself using Whittaker's chocolate and stocks pastries from local vendors. That's it for food. Turns out, people don't come for meals anyway.

They come for the specialty drinks Park perfected in Korea. Her matcha menu offers four flavor profiles from fruity to classic. The Einspänner (iced black coffee with sweetened cream) photographs beautifully, which helps on Instagram where Park actively shares the café's story.

Sunny's Take

Small businesses often feel like numbers on an economic report, but Café Ditto proves they're actually living rooms we've opened to strangers. Claire works double what most people consider full time not because the café makes her rich, but because those seven guest books represent something money can't measure: proof that people still crave connection. When the new train station opens nearby, she's ready with a video showing the walk to her door, because she knows her community needs this space as much as she needs to provide it.

In a city where cafés are closing weekly, one designer is choosing 70-hour weeks to keep the lights on and the guest books filling.