On The Up: Mai Kai food boxes launch in Hawke’s Bay, with cooking and gardening classes on top

Jody Hamilton and Gretta Carney at the opening of Mai Kai in Napier. Inset: the contents of a Mai Kai food basket.

Food boxes are being made available to Hawke’s Bay whānau at below-wholesale rates, if they attend classes showing them how to grow and cook what’s inside.

The brainchild of Gretta Carney and Jody Hamilton, Mai Kai is a community-based initiative dedicated to strengthening food systems in Hawke’s Bay.

Their vision for the company is to provide fresh, affordable, and nutritious kai boxes to whānau, alongside hands-on workshops on growing and cooking food.

Carney worked with Percy Tipene, who created and led Māori organic growers’ group Te Waka Kai Ora and the sustainability organisation Hua Parakore.

Carney said Tipene taught her about three things - native trade, succession planning, and integrity-based production.

“Mai Kai comes out of a desire to activate his vision for native trade,” she said.

“So that is an alternative economic system where people trade with each other and maintain a viable, high-integrity economy in the face of an economy that’s not really providing us value within our food system.”

Carney has been working and evolving this plan for the past eight years, but when Cyclone Gabrielle hit in 2023, the team realised how limited local food resilience was in Hawke’s Bay because of the power outages keeping stores closed, stopping people from accessing food.

Carney and Hamilton developed a pilot programme in 2023 to test the idea of a locally sourced food box “with as much organic food as possible and nutritious whole foods”.

In order to get access to it, people have to attend cooking and gardening workshops that will teach them how to cook the food in the kai box and grow it as well.

The easiest way is for a community to approach Kai Box and they then deliver boxes and take the lessons directly to them on a fortnightly basis.

“It could be like a school community or a remote rural community, a marae, or a work employer,” Carney said.

Food in the boxes includes dairy, meat, grains, and more everyday necessities for the kitchen.

Carney believes the low-cost fortnightly boxes will help local community and whānau get through the cost-of-living crisis and prepare them for a healthy future with delicious local food.

Each kai box costs $125, but holds food valued at $175.

Those interested in purchasing some can contact the team by messaging the Mai Kai Social Enterprise Facebook or Instagram page.

Jack Riddell is a multimedia journalist with Hawke’s Bay Today and spent the last 15 years working in radio and media in Auckland, London, Berlin, and Napier.