We’re All About
We believe that business can be a tool for doing good. We’re all about Lifting the Vibe! Doing the right thing by the Earth, People, and the Ocean is important to us – we are beach-loving hippies at heart, and always have some new projects on-the-go to try and make a difference where we can. Here’s what we’ve been up to since the Raglan Food Co journey began …
Hint: Click the plus toggles to read more.
Earth
We wanted to do something about the global issue of bee population decline, so throughout 2016 we sponsored 14 permaculture beehives around NZ for Kiwi families who applied to be good ‘bee guardians’. The beehives were made locally in Tauranga by a wonderful couple who really care about bees…and at the end of the year, we ordered a 15th hive for our own garden! Click here to learn more about how the Bee Friends project is doing good, and to see some of the hives.
The water quality of NZ’s streams and rivers is a growing concern due to intensive farming, and we absolutely love the vision Million Metres have of planting trees along waterways to protect natural habitats, filter pollutants and prevent erosion. We sponsored 2,143 trees over 2017 by pledging 50 cents from each Big Yoghi jar sold over fundraiser months. Click here to learn more about how our tree planting project is doing good.
We’re committed to using glass jars for our main product ranges – even though glass is more expensive and trickier to ship. That’s because glass has an infinite life-cycle, and can be recycled over and over again without decreasing in purity or quality. Our jars are made from up to 92% recycled glass – how cool is that!
The ‘Friends of Wainui’ are a wonderful group of local volunteers who have been caring for a beautiful bush reserve here in Raglan for the past 27 years. We have given all our team members the opportunity to help them out during paid work hours with tree planting, clearing, weeding, and general maintenance. We also sponsor the design of their annual fundraiser calendar.
People
When we first heard about the awful situation going on in Syria, we knew we wanted to do something to help. So we got together all with our awesome foodie friends and raffled off some yummy goodie hampers, raising $1,775. This was put towards a soup kitchen effort in Lesvos, Greece, to feed the new arrivals.
We make sure that none of our extra yoghurt goes to waste. We’ve donated our products to all sorts of great charities over the past years – some of the ones we send regular donations to include Ka Pai Kai, Eat My Lunch, (both feeding kids in lower decile schools), Lifewise Merge Cafe (feeding the homeless), and Kaivolution Food Rescue.
Mr & Mrs Coconut slept on the streets in Auckland in July 2017 to fundraise for youth homelessness, raising over $2,000. Homelessness is a growing problem here in NZ, and we believe that everyone deserves a warm, safe place to sleep – the experience of sleeping outside on cardboard made that belief even stronger.
Our team of yoghurteers are important to us and we believe the minimum wage isn’t the right standard to go by when paying people, considering how living costs keep rising. So we’ve created our very own Fair Wage policy, where our starting rate in the company is set at 10% above the NZ minimum wage. This means that even those first starting out in our company in entry-level production or dispatch work are able to have a good standard of living.
Mental & physical health are interconnected, and we do our best to take care of our team’s overall wellbeing. Some doing good initiatives we have set-up in this space are; getting a professional massage chair for our office to encourage people to take ‘mini breaks’, putting in place a 30-35 hour work week, allowing flexibility to work from home, and giving team members access to a Emergency & Wellbeing Fund, where staff can apply to have health-related expenses covered by us if they fall outside ACC.
In September 2020 we ran the Game Changers Challenge. We challenged three couples who usually ate meat and dairy to go plant-based for the entire month! We teamed up with some amazing kiwi brands to provide each couple with all the tools and resources to do so – all meals were covered and they even had a weekly consult with a naturopath and bloods done at the beginning and end of the challenge.
To find out more and to see how the contestants went click here!
Ocean
As surfers living in a beach-town, we love the ocean and don’t like the idea of big corporations mining our seabeds for profit. In October 2016 we helped Kiwis Against Seabed Mining (KASM) to protect our oceans by donating $2,500 towards the great work they’re doing. Since then we’ve continued doing good, makeing regular monthly donations to chip in.
We also sponsored a short film made here in Raglan to highlight the importance of saving Maui & Hector’s dolphins and encourage people to take action. You can watch the film here.
It’s scary to think of how much plastic ends up in our oceans! We sponsor beach clean-ups around New Zealand to remove ONE MILLION pieces of plastic from our beaches. If you’d like to be part of this movement, then please contact us to request a clean-up pack and we’ll get one out to you, along with some yoghurt to fuel your doing good efforts!
We are proud to be supporters of Sea Cleaners, and have donated $4,540 to their amazing work! They are a wonderful organisation who have cleaned up over 5.6 million litres of rubbish since 2002. Our team went out on one of their boats to clean up rubbish around the Raglan harbour, it was a great experience and we are inspired by their mission to free the seas from plastic.
There are many passionate surfers on our team, so it felt like a natural fit for us to join the ‘Between the Flags’ supporters club with a monthly donation to Surf Life Saving. We also support them with donations of yoghurt for special events. They are there for swimmers and surfers when they need it most and we are grateful for the amazing work they do.
‘Kiwis Clean Aotearoa’ was founded by Desmond Watson in January 2019 – who after being disheartened by all the litter he was seeing, resigned from his day job and has since been travelling around Aotearoa cleaning rubbish from our beaches & waterways, with only his car and sleeper cabin in tow! Raglan Food Co was super impressed with Desmond’s efforts and we’ve been giving Kiwis Clean Aotearoa a monthly donation since reaching out to him in 2020.
To follow his journey click here.
A Big Thanks!
We want to thank each of you for being part of what we believe is a change in the way business is done. You can read the full RFC Code of Conduct here. Without you guys, we wouldn’t be able to be doing the good we do, and we’re really grateful.
Together, we’re lifting the vibe!
