Each edition of The Kiwi Diary is curated with the intention of surfacing stories that are uplifting and inspirational, about people who are dedicated to finding ways of doing things that are regenerative for people and planet. We’ll be lifting some of these stories out of KD to share here on our blog - enjoy, and pass it on!
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Have you ever been asked a pretty basic question, that somehow resonated at a deeper level than expected? Recently someone asked me such a question, reminding me of a direction-shaping value we hold, but had slipped out of our focus. The question, “how important is the New Zealand story for you and Yum?” I couldn’t stop coming back to it and in 15 minutes the idea shifted from the back of my mind, to pulling on my heart so strongly that I haven’t been able to be quiet about it since.
As a chef and proponent for all things local and seasonal, it has been hard to pull these values into Yum with every ingredient because until now, many of our ingredients have come from overseas. When Covid first hit, we developed our No.8 Granola, an incredible challenge due to being made from entirely New Zealand grown ingredients, and gluten free. We learned so much, such as that sunflower seeds (used in most of our flavours) isn’t grown in NZ for human consumption, only for bird food, as there isn’t a sunflower seed huller (yet!) to hull them for people. Instead we use cold pressed sunflower seed oil. There are some resourceful farmers now branching out and (sustainably) growing quinoa, buckwheat, millet, hemp…With these incredible ingredients our No.8 has become a cult favourite, despite being our most expensive and hardest to produce. But, it’s the Yum I’m most proud of, because it’s created out of the desire to support local. Supporting local to us means sourcing as many of our ingredients as possible, from local farmers and producers here in Aotearoa, for the 2 tonne of granola we make monthly!
About six months ago we moved Yum into a larger facility which has also come with new opportunities. The Food Factory was built by Pic Picot (of Pic’s peanut butter fame) to foster local ingenuity and support startups to get their foods to market. It has four kitchens, so we no longer have to abide our gluten free ways, meaning we can now introduce more amazing, NZ-grown ingredients in the form of..grains! We recently launched our first foray into the world of oat granola, our Maple Oat Crunch with Tahini, using the humble oat grown in Otago. Our dream is to begin working directly with farmers to grow ingredients for us, shifting our supply chain from overseas, to New Zealand. We’ve paid a premium to a distributor to import organic ingredients for us... why not pay that premium to farmers here and give them a price that will suffice (and incentivise) them to grow organic? We live in an incredible food bowl, why not grow everything here? (yes, I’m an idealist!) This is our goal, so follow our journey to make the ultimate granola that represents Aotearoa in the best way possible. True provenance at breakfast is possible. Follow our Yum journey as we follow our own New Zealand story…
By Sarah Hedger | yumnz.co.nz