Angus Simms and Katie Jackson have heard the daily messages from Kāpiti residents - the Wonky Box is finally being delivered in Kāpiti.
Last year the couple started Wonky Box, a startup aiming to reduce food waste and help both the consumer and grower by saving odd-shaped fruit and vegetables from going to waste.
Collecting fruit and vegetables from growers that are perfectly usable but not accepted by supermarkets and other distributors because of their size or shape, the contents of the Wonky Box changes each week depending on what excess the growers have.
The Wonky Box founders Katie Jackson and Angus Simms.
After the subscription-based home delivery service was launched last year, orders started taking off for the fruit and vegetable boxes when they were launched in central Wellington during the level 2 lockdown.
The produce is collected from growers in Kāpiti and Horowhenua, yet the distribution is only now being offered in Kāpiti towns, following delivery opening in all other parts of the Wellington region.
"There has been a lot of demand from households in Kāpiti," Angus said.
"We've had daily messages from at least one house in Paraparaumu or Paekākāriki or other Kāpiti postcodes asking when we'll deliver to Kāpiti.
"We thought it's about time we focused on delivering here as we have expanded to include the rest of the Wellington region."
Over the last year, Wonky has grown its distribution to over 1000 households.
Angus Simms with Lisa and Tony Dale-Low from Waikawa Fresh.
"We owe a lot to Kāpiti, it's where we built the foundations of our supply - so knowing that we can now service customers there and households in amongst an area where we started to build the business is an achievement but also really satisfying.
"We often get enquiries from people in Kāpiti saying, you're picking up your vegetables from here, so surely you can deliver here too.
"They're too right and it's rewarding to know we can now service the area."
With distribution increasing, Wonky has moved from their Lyall Bay depot into a refrigerated site in Grenada North surrounded by other vegetable wholesalers, florists and big industrial businesses.
"It's scary to think that within six months we moved next door to some of the biggest wholesalers and industrial companies in New Zealand.
"We went from managing all our deliveries internally to outsourcing to small courier businesses in Wellington.
"We then built up our supply network and have spent a lot of time building relationships with not only growers on the Kāpiti and Horowhenua but also further afield in places like Hawke's Bay, Gisbourne and around Auckland."
They have also introduced two new boxes, a vegetable-only box and a student snack box.
"We saw a lot of demand for a vegetable-only box and saw demand increase when we introduced that.
"We also partnered up with Victoria University to provide students boxes to help promote healthy living for students."
Now working with growers all around the country, Angus and Katie have hired their first fulltime employee to look after the Wellington region so they can look at setting up distribution in Auckland.
"Now that we have our space in Grenada North we have room to grow and scale the business."
The long-term aim is to continue to make a positive impact in the reduction of food waste, support healthy living and become a nationwide distributor.
