Whanganui Koha Food Collective sets up 'free food supermarket'

Preparing to share food with the public are (from left) Celeste Ventura, Tui Newton, Liz Neill, Azian Zulkifli, Sonny Barlow and Oxana Jones. Photo / Bevan Conley

The Koha Food Collective is in its fourth week of setting up a "free food supermarket" on Friday afternoon at All Saints hall in Whanganui East.

It has a committee of three - Azian Zulkifli, Liz Neill and Sonny Barlow - who estimate they have been feeding about 250 people across each weekend.

The "supermarket" is open from 4.30pm to 6pm. People stand in line to enter, scan a QR code, say how many they have in their household and then fill a bag with enough food to last the weekend.

"This is not meant to be their weekly shopping," Zulkifli said.

Vaccine passes are not required for entry, because the provision of food is an essential service and the group wanted to remove every possible barrier.

"The community is very polarised. We just want to be normal," Barlow said.

The collective is purely voluntary, and all the food is donated. It started in October with the aim of feeding children and families.

All the committee members had experienced need at some time. Need was high now, with rent, petrol and food prices all going up, Neill said.

The main source of food is Just Zilch, a Palmerston North organisation set up to prevent food waste. It started with a woman giving away bread from the boot of her car and now has a cool store and gives away surplus to smaller organisations.

Other sources are individuals, bakeries, supermarkets and other businesses. Some of the food is unwanted school lunches, and the collective also gets and shares food with the City Mission's food bank, Te Ora Hou and Whanganui's Kai Hub group.

It would welcome more donations, especially of fresh healthy food and cash to pay expenses.

People can drop off donations at the hall from 1pm to 3.30pm on Fridays, and Zulkifli said the community had been very generous.

The collective uses the hall by agreement with Whanganui Anglicans. It tidies the "supermarket" away every Friday to leave space for other activities.

Members also distribute bakery food to kaumātua on Saturdays, and cook barbecue food for the churches that meet at Pākaitore/Moutoa Gardens on Sundays.

"We believe in what they're doing down there, and they like what we do," Barlow said.