Good for the pocket, puku and planet: The Papatoetoe Food Hub in 2020
The year 2020 has been a rollercoaster in Aotearoa and around the world, especially in the food business. Despite these challenges, the Papatoetoe Food Hub has continued to adapt and grow as a community-led social enterprise providing good, affordable kai.
A year of COVID and lockdowns...
Raju Ramakrishna, one of the directors of the Food Hub Collective, has worked with fellow directors Waikare Komene and Michelle Potoru to navigate their business through two COVID-19 lockdowns in March and August and adjust to dealing with new rules and different alert levels.
“It’s amazing to think that in February we were running popular hangi and umu events each week, and the community was buying it all up before we had even brought it out of the ground. We were discussing what other ethnic cuisines we could celebrate at the Food Hub and then March came and the whole world changed,” he says.
“But during that first lockdown it gave us a chance to reflect and see where we could build new initiatives and partnerships in this post-COVID world. We have to acknowledge that we are different to a traditional small food business as we have a strong group of partners and supporters (including Healthy Families South Auckland) which allows us to do many things alongside the cafe.”
Healthy Families South Auckland food systems innovator Julio Bin says that moment to reflect proved beneficial to the Food Hub.
“I think it was very valuable,” Julio says. “The Food Hub restructured the whole menu, the whole place, for pickup and delivery. And that was going to be phase three of the project and suddenly became phase one.”
The new ideas led to the Food Hub having its busiest period since opening.
“July was a triple of all the previous sales. I think the relationship with food changed. People were relating to the food hub in a different way. It’s really coming from the heart – a little bit of kindness in every transaction.”
...and a year of milestones
Despite the pandemic the Papatoetoe Food Hub has still managed to list a wealth of achievements since opening in July 2019, including:
Implementing a free delivery and pre-order pickup system for affordable meals
Partnerships with farmers in Pukekohe to rescue surplus produce and turn it into soup for school kids in Papatoetoe
Partnering with New World Papatoetoe in an ‘upcycle’ food scheme that resulted in around 500kg of produce being rescued per week
The availability of indigenous and traditional food including hangi and its world-famous Papatoetoe boil up
Supporting local food businesses including helping them set up and achieve health and safety ratings
Providing job opportunities for South Auckland locals
Visit from Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern and local MPs Arena Williams, Aupito William Sio and Jenny Salesa in August
Being awarded $200,000 by the Foundation North South Auckland Community Innovation Fund.
Creation of the Whenua to Whenua project, aimed at reducing food waste at the Food Hub and New World Papatoetoe while teaching locals about composting
Partnership with Dave Letele and BBM Motivation, with a programme aimed at getting people to understand the importance of kai for health and wellbeing.
Raju says many of these milestones were achieved through korero with like-minded people in the community.
“What I like about a lot of our kaupapa is how organic it can be at times. With the soup in schools programme it was through a connection that we got introduced to some local Pukekohe farmers who had a stockpile of produce including carrots and onions. We took that surplus produce and when we realised that we had too much, we simply talked to the local schools and libraries about providing free soup so we didn’t waste any produce and that meant tamariki got healthy warm kai during winter.”
“Even when Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern visited in August, it was because we had been talking to local Manurewa MP Arena Williams about our kaupapa and she liked it so much that she suggested the Prime Minister pay us a visit to learn more about our different approach to kai.”
Looking towards the future
The new year is bringing excitement for the Papatoetoe Food Hub after a year of anything but normal. Work with BBM Motivation is to grow in the early months of 2021 and plans are underway for more regular hangi events.
Waikare Komene says all this work comes down to two simple things: community and food.
“The Papatoetoe Food Hub is showing what’s possible when community and local government work together to tackle one of our toughest issues. But we’re not a food bank or a charity; it’s a collective of community-led enterprises aimed to be self-sustaining and employing local people.”