For once in a long time, Julie Sands didn’t have to worry about how many pies she would sell on a nippy evening.

That’s because the American women rugby players and management staff “hijacked” her Salt Air Cafe in Ngunguru and ended up eating 90 pies, fries and salad in a space of two hours on Wednesday.

The Americans are here for the Women’s Rugby World Cup and play two pool games at the Northland Events Centre in Whangārei for the next two weekends, starting this Sunday.

They are staying at the Quality Hotel Oceans in Tūtūkākā.

Sands said the team’s media liaison officer told her she wanted to put on a surprise for the girls who have been raving about her pies since trying them during the Pac4 series in Whangārei in June.

“She came and saw us and said, ‘Look, we just love to come here for dinner but all we want is pies’. She wanted to know which were the most popular pies so we did nine of our pies that were popular and what the girls did was they were set up in teams of two.

“They’d get one pie each different flavour and then cut it in half and give it to the other team member and then they’d judge the favourite pie. They had an absolute ball.”

Sands said the 46 Americans spent more than $1000 which was fantastic for a small Northland business.

They had steak and cheese, steak and mushroom, mince, mince and cheese, mince bacon and mushroom, seafood, butter chicken, pepper steak, fries but then they got extra fries after that because they said they loved their fries and big salad.

US player Kathryn Treder said her colleagues loved the hospitality and the food was excellent.

“It’s nice to come back to kind of a home base.”

Another player Kristine Sommer said it was nice coming back to Tūtūkākā because they were familiar with the staff and the community.

Salt Air Cafe hired a couple of extra staff on what Sands said was a great night.

“We loved doing it too… it was so cool. Luckily we didn’t have any bookings that night so it was a private function pretty much, but we still did takeaways,” Sands said.

“It was just an absolute fun night. My staff were buzzing this morning, saying ‘Oh my God, it was so good last night’. This team has, of course it has boosted our weekly tally, but it’s good for my staff to have people like that from different countries coming in here.”

Sands’ cafe typically sells between 100 and 120 pies in winter and double that in summer for $7 each.

“I really like it when my customers are so happy. It makes me think, ‘Yeah, we do do a good job’. We’re pretty proud of ourselves,” she said.

Before Covid hit, Sands was getting lots of Spanish, French and Australian customers because they were walking the tracks and would have their breakfast and use Wi-Fi in her cafe.

She previously hired a Spanish, two French and an Italian person during their working holiday.

The USA will play Italy in the first of a triple-header in Whangārei this Sunday and Japan on October 15. The Americans’ last pool match is against neighbours Canada at Waitakere Stadium in Auckland on October 23.