New Zealand recorded 514 small business sales in the year to March 2026, the most since brokers began tracking the market. Liquid Lightning was one of them.
Maddi Hill-Lovett and her co-owner, Tanner Schmidt, took over the Auckland cold-pressed juice and wellness bar from a departing owner in 2024. Two years on, a plan that collapsed almost immediately has turned into a shopfront on Hardinge Street, a growing wholesale book and brand tie-ins with Asics, New Balance and Lululemon.
From Caretakers to Co-Owners
Grace, the business’s previous owner, was not shopping Liquid Lightning around when she told Hill-Lovett and Schmidt she was moving to London. She asked the pair to keep the juice and wellness brand running while she was away, a simple favour between friends.
That changed once she came home. Grace offered first right to buy, and Hill-Lovett and Schmidt took it, inheriting a small-batch juice and smoothie brand with recipes and regular customers, but no kitchen or shop of its own.
Hill-Lovett described the takeover to the New Zealand Herald for On The Up, a weekly series from NZME, the Herald’s publisher. “We initially wanted to open a physical space immediately, but it all fell through so we had to readapt what we were going to do,” she said.
Readapting meant going fully direct-to-consumer: juices and smoothies sold online, catering for events and wholesale juice supplied to cafes and offices, while the co-owners kept scouting for a site worth committing to. It took more than a year of ownership before they landed on a spot on Hardinge Street they thought was “cool enough to move in to.”
New Zealand’s Quiet Wave of Business Handovers
The Liquid Lightning deal was small, informal and personal, struck between two people who already trusted each other. It still belongs to a pattern now showing up clearly in New Zealand’s business ownership data.
Business broker ABC Business Sales tracks small and medium sized company sales nationally, and describes current conditions as strong buyer demand continuing to favour sellers. The generational shift behind that demand shows up in who sits on each side of the deal: older owners retiring, younger buyers, some of them corporate escapees trading salary security for equity, stepping into their place.
| Metric | Figure |
|---|---|
| SME sales, year to March 2026 | 514, up 21% year on year |
| Sellers aged over 46 | 65% |
| Buyers aged under 46 | 52% |
| ABC Business Sales began tracking this market | 2020 |
Steve Smith of ABC Business Sales argues the long-predicted flood of retiring owners was always overstated. His firm’s analysis counts around 13,770 boomer-owned small and medium businesses in New Zealand, and projects roughly 1,370 of them will reach the market each year over the coming decade.
Hardinge Street, Five Months Late
Finding a site was step one. Building it out was the part that actually tested them.
“I would say the delays in getting our site built were a challenge,” Hill-Lovett said. “We started that fit-out in January, so it took more than five months to get sorted.”
Auckland fit-outs run long by nature. Commercial real estate firm JLL puts the average moderate-quality fit-out at NZ$3,216 per square metre, and hospitality sites carry extra requirements again, from grease traps and ventilation to food safety sign-off that a standard retail fit-out never has to clear.
For Hill-Lovett, the wait bought control over how the juice actually gets made, in a working kitchen and shop sharing one small footprint. “It’s also been a case of making sure that it’s done right and the way we want it, especially knowing how we want to do production and make everything in the same little space,” she said. “Working out the flow of things.”
That wait also gave the pair time to rebuild the business itself. Since taking over, the changes include:
- Redeveloped juice and smoothie recipes, reworked from what Grace left behind
- New grab-and-go items, including chia pots, for customers who want something to eat as well as drink
- A bigger wholesale operation supplying juice to other cafes and businesses
- Ongoing event catering, a holdover from the direct-to-consumer years that never went away
Watching the business turn physical again was the highlight, Hill-Lovett said. “Being able to see what the brand is as a whole and ordering a drink in person, I think that transition’s been great to see,” she said.
Cold-Pressed Juice Chases a Premium Niche
Liquid Lightning’s bet is riding a category that is shrinking and growing at the same time.
Across the Tasman, where most retail data on this category gets tracked, overall juice consumption is falling as shoppers get more health conscious, according to research firm IBISWorld. What is not falling is strong downstream demand from cafes, restaurants and takeaway outlets, exactly the channel Liquid Lightning sells through.
Market researcher IMARC values Australia’s fruit juice market at US$4.5 billion in 2024, projecting it to reach US$6.1 billion by 2033, with cold-pressed and reduced-sugar products named as the segment pulling that growth along. Plain juice is a mature, slowing category, while cafes and takeaway outlets keep buying the premium, functional version in small batches.
That premium positioning is also the logic behind the brand tie-ups. Hill-Lovett names Asics, New Balance and Lululemon as clients the business now works with on activations. “We get to work with amazing Australasian brands like Asics, New Balance and Lululemon, so it’s great to bring the lifestyle side of the brand to the forefront as well,” she said.
A Southern Girl Eyes Queenstown
Growth, for now, means opening a second location.
“It’s definitely a goal to add another location, and we’ve dabbled in thoughts of where would work best,” Hill-Lovett said. “Auckland’s a great spot and there’s a lot of good food and beverage opportunities here, but I’m a southern girl at heart.”
Hill-Lovett grew up in Invercargill, and Queenstown keeps coming up in those conversations. “It doesn’t have much in that wellness space, but either way we’re planning on growing the business and hopefully opening another one,” she said.
Learn as You Go
Asked what she would tell someone eyeing a business of their own, Hill-Lovett kept her answer simple.
I would say just do it and learn as you go. I feel like there’s so many resources in 2026 that people can use that are free or take a small subscription, but there’s so many resources and videos online that can give you all that information. But really just go for it. You’ll learn a lot about yourself and a lot about business in the process as well.
Maddi Hill-Lovett, co-owner of Liquid Lightning, gave that advice to the Herald.
Accounting and advisory firm PwC tracks New Zealand’s mergers and acquisitions market every quarter. Its latest update recorded 49 announced deals in the first quarter of 2026, up 36 percent on the same period the year before. Ownership across New Zealand is changing hands faster, from small deals like this one up to the largest.
For now, the only address is Hardinge Street. Five months after the fit-out was meant to be finished, Hill-Lovett says the plan is to settle in before adding anything else.
