Duane Dalton and his late wife Tania, a former Silver Ferns netballer, pictured in 2012. Photo / Getty Images
This article ran in April and is one of the most popular stories on nzherald.co.nz in 2023.
NZ Pita Pit founder Duane Dalton sits down with Steve Holloway and Seamus Marten from the Between Two Beers podcast to discuss life, business, and dealing with tragedy following the loss of his wife Tania in 2017.
Former Silver Fern Tania Dalton would have approved of the manner in which her husband Duane has made the most of life since her unexpected death.
A goal shooter with the 2003 Netball World Championship-winning Silver Ferns squad and an engaging, ebullient character within the wider sporting community, Tania collapsed while playing a social game of touch rugby in Takapuna and died days later on March 1, 2017, from a ruptured internal carotid artery aneurysm. Aged just 45, she left behind a husband of 20 years and children aged, 15, 13 and 10.
Now six years down the track, Duane Dalton - himself a versatile former New Zealand surf lifesaving and sprint kayak representative - shared the story of how he picked up the pieces from this tragedy and quietly reinvented himself as a significant community-based philanthropist and fundraiser on the latest episode of the Between Two Beers podcast, out this week.
If Tania will always be remembered as a vibrant, larger-than-life character with a real spring in her step, today Duane shares many similar traits.
With the help of friends, he has formed the Tania Dalton Foundation, which gives others an opportunity to emulate her by providing support, guidance and life skills to promising young sportswomen.
At the same time he has completed a career transition from North Shore phys ed teacher to highly successful businessman after introducing takeaway franchise Pita Pit to New Zealand (as co-chief executive) while simultaneously raising a household of kids who are now all on their way to becoming champion athletes themselves.
Daughter Tayla Dalton has just made the Tall Ferns squad to tour Europe and has secured a full academic scholarship in the States.
Eldest son Charlie has been a starting player for Auckland Tuatara in the NZ National Basketball League in his first year out of school and is about to head off to the US on a basketball and beach volleyball scholarship.
Youngest son Matt - destined to be taller than all of them - is in his second year at Rosmini College and playing basketball as well, including for North Harbour.
Dalton still vividly recalls returning from a fishing trip in 2017 and becoming “a stunned mullet” upon learning of Tania’s admission to hospital.
“We’d had an absolute stellar day, oil-slick calm water, caught heaps of fish, and just got back into Takapuna, and there was a chance I was going to make it to that touch game,” he said.
‘But for whatever reason, I didn’t, and we stayed on, had a few beers. You know, to sort of toast the day. And then receive the phone call - and you go from having a little beer buzz on to just try to even wrap your head around what has been just said to you - and how could this be true?”
Dalton described himself as “a process guy first and foremost” who was desperately trying to work out the percentages of Tania surviving.
“That first day, you know, the doctors did invite me in to, to the intensive care. And that was an image that I’ll never forget. I didn’t think anybody, any human, could lose that amount of blood. The floors were just completely covered.
“And there’s the love of your life, the mother of your children. And it sort of hits home that it’s like ... this isn’t a given that she’s gonna get through this. And then you go home you get to think and process - and it was brutal.”
Despite the prognosis, Duane was initially confident that given Tania’s health and strength of character that she might still pull through.
“We’re having these sort of one-on-ones with the doctors, and they’re trying to prepare you for the worst. And you know, you’re sort of going, ‘Yeah, I can accept that for a normal person, but she’s not normal. She’s got a hell of a lot of fighting’.
“And yeah, it was pretty tough. But again, a rock-solid family and a phenomenal group of friends rallied.”
Then in the wake of her death, the concept of a foundation to honour Tania’s legacy crystallised in discussions with friends Scott Pritchard and Steve Jurkovich - both now foundation trustees.
Dalton described the foundation as “a legacy to a person that just basically soaked every ounce of fun out of life”.
“I think when we just lived our lives together, T (Tania) was T,” he said. “She was the kids’ mum, she was my wife, she was your bestie.
“The funeral and suddenly the taking away of that personality, actually highlighted that here was someone who really did live life with a passion and saw the best in everything and the best in everyone - and very rarely had a bad word to say against people.
“She would compete on the international stage and still do it with a little smile ... would make a mistake on an international stage, and then look across at the bench and wink and joke because while she took everything about her life, or her sporting career and her kids and family seriously, she never sort of really took herself too seriously.
“And I think that’s what made her such a people magnet.”
The birth of the foundation was “a hell of a lot of hard work” to start, but today is well established and aims to award 12 scholarships each year (73 awarded to date) which support recipients over a three-year period, providing financial assistance, one-on-one mentoring support and personal development opportunities.
A broader goal of the foundation’s scholarship programme is for these young female recipients to then “pay it forward” in terms of the benefits they accrue and contribute back to their communities and continue the legacy for future generations.
A further initiative of the foundation is the “Pass it Forward” project to get sports equipment into the hands of Kiwi kids, in conjunction with Rebel Sport. This has disbursed over $600,000 worth of sports balls to schools and organisations, with Dalton estimating a connection point of 800,000 students touching a ball in some way, shape, or form.
Here’s Dalton on the importance of sport in our society: “The thing we love about sport is it transcends race, religion, wealth. You go and put on your team jersey ... you all come together for a common goal.
“And it unites people in a way that I don’t think there’s a lot of other things in society that do. So we are a massive advocate of it.
“People talk about this sort of divisive country at the moment - you go into sport, all that gets parked. Whether it’s for the 80 minutes on the field, or for the training sessions everybody comes together as well.”
The Tania Dalton Foundation also promotes The Resilience Project - a passion of Dalton’s - which delivers emotionally engaging programmes to schools, communities, sports clubs and businesses. It seeks to build resilience and happiness, based on “GEM principles” of gratitude, empathy, and mindfulness.
“We just saw the real need for it, when you see some of the stats that are coming out.
“I’m talking sort of predominantly intermediate type school kids here, but one in four kids are turning up to school not really to learn.
“By that, I mean they haven’t had breakfast, or they haven’t had a proper night’s sleep. You know, they’re getting served up all this stuff on social media, that they’re, they’re getting lost for what reality is like ... The constant feed of stuff reinforces behaviour that doesn’t necessarily reflect reality, or society.”
The foundation was in a large part only possible because of the second major strand of Dalton’s evolution: bringing Pita Pit to New Zealand and then fine-tuning the takeaway franchise to the extent that it now has over 90 outlets nationwide.
It originated rather randomly, with one of his former work colleagues at Kristin School, Chris Henderson, working as a ski instructor in Mammoth, California. Henderson texted to say he’d come across a great business opportunity - ‘like Subway but better’.
Dalton, with no previous business experience replied: “Sweet, I’m in,” and Henderson duly went and pitched an offer to Pita Pit.
“We made it,” Dalton said. “Signed the rights - and I’d still never even tried one. So, massive faith in my business partner.”
But to make it work, both men had to borrow money from their parents and invest a huge amount of time, having been afforded the freedom in their franchise agreement to “New Zealand-ize” the Pita Pit concept, which had previously been centred on North American university towns.
Here Dalton offered a telling insight into Tania’s character as they contemplated a huge business step together.
“T (Tania) sort of said to me, ‘Okay, well, in the big scheme of things, what, what’s the worst thing that could happen to us?’ and I’m like, ‘Well, we could lose our house’.
“Then this is typical T - she goes, ‘But we could move in down at the Takapuna Motor Camp. You think about raising kids right on the water with Takapuna beach there, we could go for swims in the morning’.
“And that was just her natural way of turning something scary, big and threatening into, ‘Oh my God, how cool would it be if we lived in Takapuna Beach Motor Camp?’”
As it happened, the fears were unfounded because today New Zealand has more Pita Pit outlets per head of population than anywhere else in the world.
But the early days were tough, with Dalton working for North Harbour Rugby at the time, then doing night shifts in the original North Shore Pita Pit store after Tania and Henderson had done the day shift.
The bar across the road would close at 1am, with Pita Pit staying open until 2am to catch the late crowd with the munchies.
“We would have lines out the door with some funny photos and memories from those days around what people would put on - they’d have triple meat and two bags of chips and what have you, and it sort of really gathered bit of a sort of cult following. And we grew from there.”
Though initially Dalton thought they’d had a flop, having signed a pricey lease at the height of the bubble.
“We opened at the start of the technical recession and we just thought we were doomed but we traded our way through.
“And then we did we sort of get a little match-meet-kindling moment where it suddenly started getting real traction and there was sort of the whispered secret of ‘Oh, my God, you’ve got to go and try this place’, with a lot of comparisons to the subways of the world.”
Suddenly it was “crazy times” with stores opening all over the country.
Through the nature of their food, these days Pita Pit is also involved with the government’s free school lunch programme, doing around 75,000 meals a week. Earlier this month Pita Pit also did the catering for Westlake Boys High’s hosting of 600 principals for the International Boys’ School Coalition.
And now they’re toying with a new business concept called “Club Grub” which is to utilise kitchens of sports clubs and bring brands to smaller towns that might not justify a Pita Pit store, but might just be a means to take brands there and get revenue back to cash-strapped clubs.
Meanwhile Dalton is now looking at wellness programmes for franchisees, and in terms of mental health awareness, installing “gratitude walls” within Pita Pit stores, where, while waiting for their food, customers can reflect on something that they’re grateful for.
Perhaps the best endorsement of Dalton’s ongoing initiatives comes from daughter Tayla.
“Dad got dealt a bloody shitty card in life,” she said. “When we lost mum, dad stepped up and absolutely took it in stride. No one deserves what happened to him. Dad has been the most amazing dad and mother figure for us.
“He made it possible for us to do everything that we wanted to do. He supported us in every way. Not many people a few days after their wife’s death, think about keeping your legacy alive, like he did with setting up mum’s foundation.
“And now not only is he keeping her alive, but he’s touching the lives of so many young women which is bloody incredible and inspirational.”
Dalton’s mate Scott Pritchard largely concurred with that precis - though disagreed on the “mum’ part.
“His greatest achievement in his life is his response to Tania’s passing and how he’s given those kids the best opportunity to be remarkable ... Tayla’s a carbon-copy of her mum in terms of the way she engages with people. She’s been a solidifying force as the oldest – doing amazing things with the Tall Ferns.
“What he [Duane] has done really well is to not try and be mum. He’s always been honest and said, ‘I am who I am, and I’ll give you everything I’ve got, but I’m not your mum. I can’t replace her, and I won’t’.
“But he’s been the best father that he can be. He’s always been open to feedback and sought advice. The old Duane would have figured things out for himself.”
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