For Good

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!

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.

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 have also sponsored the design of some of their annual fundraiser calendars.

We enjoy helping out with the cool things that are happening in this special place, so we’ve created the RFC Community Fund as a way to support & promote some of the awesome local projects that align with our values!

The RFC Community Fund gives out $5,000 of grants per year – the size of each grant varies depending on the needs of the project. If you’d like to apply for a grant, head here!

We’re all about lifting the vibe at Raglan Food Co, and know so many kiwis are too, so we’ve introduced the Vibe Lifter Program! Members of the public can nominate individuals who are doing great things for their community or environment.

It doesn’t matter if their project is big or small, nominees go in the running to win a $2,500 grant (plus a year’s supply of our delicious products!) to support their initiative, and the winning nominator wins a year’s supply too! If you want to nominate someone, head here!

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.

We do our best to take care of our team’s overall well-being and have a number of initiatives in place. We regularly have team catch ups & getaways, we have flexibility around work hours and working from home, and give team members access to an Emergency & Well-being Fund where staff can apply to have health related expenses covered by us if they fall outside ACC.

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.

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, making regular monthly donations to chip in.

It’s scary to think of how much plastic ends up in our oceans! We’ve partnered with beach clean-up groups around New Zealand & Australia to remove ONE MILLION pieces of plastic from our beaches. If you’d like to be part of this movement, learn more about this project here.

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.