Uber driver Shelley Winiana bakes shortbread to share with her passengers while she takes them to their destination. Photo: RNZ / Leonard
The quality of ride sharing services can vary, but a 70-year-old Hamilton woman has found the secret to happy customers.
Uber driver Shelley Winiana bakes big batches of shortbread to share with her passengers while she takes them to their destination.
She told RNZ's First Up she makes five or six trays each Sunday night.
"That's straight out of the old Edmonds cookbook, but I do add a little bit of custard powder.
"When I first started, I was trying to think of something gimmicky I could give out to my customers, and my sister was here one day and she said, 'how about shortbread?' I said, yep, that's easy to make, I can do that.
"And I just put two pieces in a little cellophane sealed packet, and I started getting them out. I had some left over so I kept giving them out, but I kind of envisioned getting the same customers over and over again.
"I found out, no, they were totally different the next week. Then I thought, well, I might have to keep doing this for a while. Five years and three months later, I'm still making shortbread."
Winiana said over those years she has got to to know many returning customers and made some good friends.
"They love it. As soon as they get in, they go, 'Shortbread Shelley!' and they get so excited.
"It really amazes me with the young students going into the nightclubs ... they all take it and a lot of them tell me that was a life saver. 'I got home and I was so drunk and so hungry. And then I remembered your packet of shortbread in my back pocket and it saved my life.'"
Winiana retired a year before turning 65, but boredom quickly got to her.
"I sat around and I thought oh, this is driving me insane. Used to get up out of my La-Z-Boy and would forget why I was getting up. I thought no, I've got to do something.
"I had a retirement fund, paid into for a few years, and it matured when I turned 65. So I thought, I'm going to buy a hybrid and become an Uber driver. Best decision I've ever made in my life.
"I love people, and I'm a real people person, so I got out to meet all these lovely people and generally the people that ride in Ubers are lovely, lovely people and I've made some really good friends doing it."
Winiana said she had three women she saw regularly and even invited one to her 70th birthday.
"She just fitted in, she was absolutely lovely. Other ones I invited back for Christmas because I knew they were having time on their own, they didn't have any family or anything.
"One of them showed up and she was adorable. She's a lecturer at Waikato University and she and my husband got on like a house on fire. That was so cute. That was really special that she showed up. I was so excited."
Winiana said she loved people and enjoyed talking.
"Also I did a course with Landmark Education many years ago where I became a coach, a life coach.
"So there's a lot of people, and that really surprises me, men will just get in my car and start talking about something really personal that they've never been able to talk to anybody about.
"So I've become a bit of a true confessional in my car, and it's great because I can give them advice from my grounding and everything, and they really appreciate it. I've met some people that really had problems and I was able to talk them through it and give them alternatives, some ways they they can do things and they just so appreciate it, it's lovely."
Winiana said she will one day write a memoir of her time as an Uber driver, to share some of the comical things that have happened in her car, but she guarantees anonymity for all passengers involved.
Listen to the story on First Up