Ms McIvor and Daron Toeke have relocated their business Unique Hangis and Catering Services from Queenstown to the coastal township.
While they have operated their catering business for the past five years, they diversified into pies, using traditional hangi meat, nearly a year ago.
They bought the Hampden property four years ago as an investment and, last year, for financial and lifestyle reasons, they decided to move there. Already the decision had paid off, with their overheads cut substantially, Ms McIvor said.
For the pie meat, whole joints of meat go into wire baskets which are then placed in an Oamaru stone-lined pit, on top of the ground, and cooked.
It then goes into the commercial kitchen on site and is chopped and mixed "with secret herbs and spices", before being chilled and sent to Beano's Pies in Waikouaiti to be turned into pies.
The couple have been selling hangi pies from Christchurch to Bluff, averaging 480 standing orders a week, and Ms McIvor is aiming at 1000 by the end of May.
Ms McIvor said they were also the only business registered as a traditional mobile hangi catering service, with fire and rock.
Mr Toeke, who grew up with hangis and was taught to lay them "as a nipper", digs pits on site at functions.
"To Daron, doing a hangi's not work... it's a way of life," she said.
Ms McIvor said she had no Maori ancestry and was "Irish and Scottish through and through", but the hangi was part of the Kiwi way of life.
