$181 restaurant bill? I'll take the works

Don Scott/The Press

BARGAIN HUNTERS: Theresa Cowan and her mother, Kathy Dryfhout, check out their newly-acquired restaurant at Northlands Mall.

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If your restaurant bill came to $181, you might think it on the steep side.

But what if that price bought the whole restaurant?

Theresa Cowan, 27, snagged a TradeMe bargain last week when she won an online auction for a 60-seater former Spagalimis pizza restaurant in Christchurch's Northlands Shopping Centre for a bid of $181.

The bargain arose from Cowan's late-night TradeMe surfing from her Auckland home. She saw the offer and placed an auto-bid with a top price of $181.

"I did the extra dollar because most people stop at a rounded number," she said.

"That's what did it for me."

While organising her brood of four children, aged two to eight, she realised she had won.

"It was a bit surreal but better than anything I expected," she said on viewing the premises with her business partner mother.

"I've got no experience in the restaurant business. I've never been a waitress or anything but mum used to manage a Cobb and Co about 10 years ago.

"We've got big ideas for this place."

A decade ago, Cowan was kicking a drug and alcohol problem which left her on the streets.

She had come from "a good family and gone to the good schools" but rather than follow the respectable route taken by her peers, Cowan went off the rails in her teenage years.

At 17, she emerged from a rehabilitation clinic with a new lease on life, and a new life of leases. She now has two leases for designer sunglasses businesses in Auckland and is awaiting the final sign-off for the TradeMe deal.

Yesterday, she and her mother, Kathy Dryfhout, flew to Christchurch to talk to Northlands Shopping Centre management about ideas for the new restaurant.

Plans include a computer terminal at each booth to allow menu orders and access to one website, TradeMe. The eatery will be called Restaurant 181 for obvious reasons.

Spagalimis director Andrew Cooper said that despite the mall branch having a $400,000 fit-out four years ago, he was happy with the $181. "We would have given it away really," he said.

Their flagship Victoria Street store had become the big pull for diners and a franchisee was after another premises in the northwest of Christchurch.

It would have cost him tens of thousands to break the shopping-centre lease and quit the premises.

"Those ladies sound really keen; I couldn't be happier for them."