Food For Love general manager Jodie Stuart (left) and Bayleys Canterbury auctioneer Tina Chamberlain.
A battle of the butters has raised thousands for charity after a South Island community handed over $11,500 for 10 blocks in a bid to crush a North Island record.
The winner – whose triumph was financed by some last-minute crowd-funding spurred on by an ambitious volunteer auctioneer in Wānaka last night – then handed the dairy swag back to the meal-making charity it was auctioned to support.
Selling 500g blocks of Mainland butter for 115 times their regular supermarket price of around $10 helped the Food For Love charity raise more than $50,000 towards providing free, home-cooked meals to those in need across Upper Clutha.
But it also helped the southern crowd beat the 20 pounds of Anchor-brand butter sold for $10,000 at an Auckland fundraiser in September, Bayleys Canterbury auctioneer Tina Chamberlain told the Herald.
She heard about the northern butter bonanza after seeing a tweet by high-profile North Shore real estate agency boss Martin Cooper.
“So I was like, let’s find [another brand of] butter and see if we can beat that $10,000 … and we did it, and it was absolutely incredible,” Chamberlain said.
The volunteer auctioneer – Bayleys Wānaka is a partner of Food For Love – asked Fonterra to donate 10 blocks of Mainland butter, the brand chosen as a nod to the South Island’s Mainland nickname as the geographical size superior to the North Island.
Mainland was chosen as a rival of sorts to Waikato-native Anchor, although both are part of a sale to France’s Lactalis agreed to by the dairy co-operative’s members this week.
After an absentee bid of $1000 by Crown Range local and celebrity chef Nadia Lim to get the auction started, subsequent bidders added another couple of thousand dollars, Chamberlain said.
“It was sitting at around $3000 and I said, look, we at least need to get to $5000, because that would be on par of [averaging] $500 per block [like the Auckland auction].
“And this lady just said, ‘I’ll give you $5000’.”
Chamberlain, still keen for the win, asked the woman if she could bid another $50.
“Somebody said, ‘I’ll give her $50. And that started it … somebody else said, ‘I’ll give her $100′, and I said ‘does anyone want to give her $1000 to strengthen her bid?’
“And it carried on until we got to $11,500. She won with all these contributions from other people in the crowd … even I contributed $100.”
Afterwards, the woman posed for a photo with her financial supporters, before donating all 10 blocks back to Food For Love.
But Chamberlain, whose competitive spirit had helped rouse the audience, isn’t done yet, she said.
“I’m pretty sure Fonterra will be stoked, but then somebody said to me, ‘Why don’t you challenge Fonterra to match that $11,500?’
“So, I’m going to put the challenge out to Fonterra to do so, because Food For Love said dairy is one of the things they really struggle with when they’re making their meals, because it’s so expensive.”
About $50,000 was raised through last night’s gala, live and silent auctions, Food For Love general manager Jodie Stuart said.
“We’re constantly fundraising and going out for community grants … but this is the biggest fundraiser we’ve ever done. This will help us focus on our cooking and not have to be doing as much fundraising in this financial year.”
Recipients are nominated by others to support them while dealing with mental or physical illness, injury, bereavement and relationship or financial difficulties. Bulk cooked meals are also provided for the elderly at weekends or other times as necessary.
Demand for the free meals provided by the 9-year-old not-for-profit was “absolutely” growing, Stuart said.
Food For Love and its volunteers, who now number more than 170, made and delivered more than 9220 meals in the last financial year, compared with 1700 in 2020-21 – an increase of more than 400%, Stuart said.
“And in the last three years we’ve grown 132% in the number of nominations we get … so, yeah, the growth has been huge.”
Cherie Howie is an Auckland-based reporter who joined the Herald in 2011. She has been a journalist for more than 20 years and specialises in general news and features.