‘Our business is gone’: Lyttelton’s Shroom Room cafe badly damaged in fire

Monday, 22 June 2026

The owners of a Lyttelton cafe ravaged in a fire say they are “shell-shocked” and have lost their business.

Firefighters rushed to the Shroom Room, a popular cafe on London St, about 8pm on Sunday and found it engulfed in flames. Smoke billowed from the cafe into the harbour as the fire raged.

Four crews of firefighters extinguished the blaze by about 8.40pm, and had dampened down a neighbouring bookshop by about 9.30pm.

The fire is not believed to have been suspicious, and a fire investigator was at the scene on Monday to determine how it started.

Koryn Hope and Richie Leech have owned the Shroom Room Cafe for 12 years.

They were hiking in Abel Tasman when they received the call on Sunday evening to say their business was ablaze.

“Our business is gone,” Leech said. Hope said they were “shell-shocked”.

“Honestly, it couldn’t be worse timing to not be there. We feel so awful for our staff who are obviously going to lose their jobs.”

Fire and Emergency’s southern shift manager Bailey Wells said the fire was “called in by someone walking past who saw the flames”.

No one was at the cafe when the fire began, but there were concerns it had spread to the bookshop next door, London Street Bookshop.

Firefighters opened a section of the bookshop’s roof to check it wasn’t also ablaze and to let it cool.

Hope called Deborah Clark, the bookshop’s owner, as the fire raged.

“It was pretty horrific,” Clark said. “People [were] everywhere and when they were opening the roof we were slightly horrified that they were going to start with the hose in the room.

Thankfully firefighters didn’t use water on Clark’s shop, which has been on London St for about 30 years, but she said there may have been smoke damage.

“We don’t know what the damage is going to be like, and we definitely we won’t be open for a while.

“We have survived earthquakes and a pandemic … we’re really hoping that the building that we’re actually in is OK.”

Clark on Monday was packing up her thousands of books into hundreds of boxes from Pak’nSave in the hope they can be saved and sold, but without any insurance for them, she and her partner Andrew Tebbutt may have to “eat the cost”.

Clark said she felt sorry for Hope and Leech: “They’ve lost everything.”

The pair have seen a number of videos of the blaze online, Hope saying: “They were awful to watch.”

Hope said she had heard reports the fire started in the kitchen, but received calls from firefighters that the kitchen was unscathed and it actually began in the front-of-house area.

“It’s quite odd because everything gets turned off out there, so I don’t know where it started.”

Hope and Leech contacted their staff overnight, and planned to travel back to Christchurch on Monday.

Hope said their staff, who number about eight, were “devastated”.

“We really love our staff. Lyttelton’s a great community.”

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