Meet the Bay food box companies providing local food to local people
Debra Youthed is a creative content writer. Contact her at Write Me.
The sinking feeling of trying to throw a quick meal together from a mismatched assortment of ingredients after a busy day is a familiar one for many of us.
So, it’s no surprise the popularity of subscription food boxes has taken off as our lives become more hectic and commitment heavy.
There are certainly many benefits eliminating the need for trawling through recipes, weekly shopping lists, blowing the budget on supermarket temptations, and less food waste. As demand grows more options enter the market like vegan, gourmet, and calorie-controlled meals, with more product twists popping up as competitors try to stay on top of a thriving industry.
While the national and international brands dominate the market there are also local alternatives offering locally sourced, flexible meal kit options that don’t lock their customers to weekly subscriptions.
When My Food Bag started delivering to Hawke’s Bay in 2016 the impact on Paul Greaney’s Havelock North butchery was a dramatic drop of 25-30 customers a day. Instead of accepting the loss he teamed up with customer, friend and chef Kate Lester to launch On Your Plate, the region’s first local food box.
On Your Plate's pork belly meal.
The cornerstone of their business philosophy was to build strong relationships with small local producers and suppliers of nutritious wholefoods. Paul believes the key to maintaining ‘reliable, sustainable sources of high-quality products with flexible service is paying a fair price to mum and dad suppliers’, which in turn ensures they can offer consistent quality and service to their customers.
The company’s support of the local economy is a priority as Paul proudly states their aim has always been ‘to keep every dollar we spend in Hawke’s Bay and we’ve managed to do that’ creating a positive economic ripple effect through the community.
On Your Plate's chicken and nectarine salad.
While Paul focusses on the suppliers Kate creates recipes that adhere to the company’s policy of nutrition dense meals for hearty appetites that include at least 200 grams of free-range meat per portion while keeping the cost comparable to the national brands. Having already written over 500 recipes Kate is always looking to innovate and capitalise on the artisan food Hawke’s Bay is famous for.
The launch of HelloFresh in Hawke’s Bay has had a significant effect on the business with a 40% drop in orders resulting in having to cut half their part time staff by half. But Paul and Kate are rising to the challenge with a new family box featuring quicker, simpler meals without sacrificing nutritional value, coming online in a couple of weeks. Paul says the company is ‘ever evolving’ with new products currently in development to meet the customer’s needs in a competitive industry and keep as much of the local food spend in the Bay as possible.
A more recent local company to throw their hat in the meal kit ring is Value Food Bags based in Napier. Liz Yarwood’s experiences as a social worker combined with her life-long passion for cooking inspired her to launch the company in October 2017.
Liz Yarwood's mission is to encourage families to cook and eat nutritious meals together.
Having studied child nutrition Liz knew she was facing an uphill battle running programmes to increase social skills and self-esteem for children who were participating on empty stomachs.
As she says ‘80% of learning is lost if children haven’t eaten by 1pm’ so she fought for a small budget and provided basic sandwiches. But Liz was determined to ‘help struggling families’ in the long term and knew it was vital to address tight budgets and often limited cooking skills to make a real difference, so she created the original Value Food Bag – 5 meals for a family of 4 costing $99 complete with recipes and instructions suitable for novice cooks.
Value Food Bag's steak pie.
Since then she has expanded her offerings so be as flexible, and healthy, as possible – including boxes for couples, meal swap options ideal for families with fussy children, and Mediterranean style food which was voted the best overall way of eating this year by US News. A popular feature of her boxes is a weekly ‘fakeaway’ dish so families can still have ‘a treat in moderation’ such as pizza, burgers and kebabs, that are cheaper, healthier and quicker than buying takeaways.
She is constantly ‘pushing outside the box’ to create quick and easy recipes based on quality meat and the hierarchy of carbs, which prioritises the carbohydrates found in fruit and vegetables over those from grains and starches, in her mission to ‘help all kiwi families to cook, and share, healthy food.’
Value Food Bag's healthy chicken and chickpea bowl with coriander crème.
While many of Liz’s recipes are influenced on her extensive travel around the Mediterranean, Asia and India she sources as many ingredients as possible locally from ‘one-man band’ suppliers because ‘if you can support local businesses, why wouldn’t you?’
According to Time Magazine, the food subscription box business is worth USD$2.2 billion globally, and rising, so we can expect more people to join the food subscription lifestyle. If only 500 Hawke’s Bay households subscribe to international and national meal kit providers at an average cost of $150 per week that adds up a food spend of $3.9 million leaving the economy of one of the world’s finest food producing regions.
The irony of transporting the weekly shop into an area that produces amazing food isn’t lost on the Hawke’s Bay foodies running On Your Plate and Value Food Bags. While both companies may target different markets, they are both passionate about keeping at least a portion of that revenue circulating where it will benefit the local economy, while providing quality Hawke’s Bay food for Hawke’s Bay people.
