Deneale Knox started Food for Thought, an eco-store and pantry refillery at The Tannery in Woolston, after struggling to fit the plastic waste from her family’s supermarket shop in their red bin. Now she’s on a mission to help all of us reduce our ecological footprint.

How did you decide what to stock at Food for Thought?

Our priorities were to be plastic-free and ethical. We work with responsible suppliers: some, for example, get their products mass-produced in China, but they ensure everyone is getting a fair wage and working in good conditions. And we stock brands like Trade Aid, which are sustainable and fair trade. We also stock local wherever possible – I’m a firm believer in supporting local businesses. So it’s all ethical, sustainable, and if something’s got plastic in it, that’s a no-go.

Who are your favourite local suppliers?

We get great hazelnuts that are grown over in Tai Tapu, and Brothers Green supplies our hemp products from North Canterbury.
Further afield we’ve got this awesome hot sauce made by Apostle in Wellington. We’ve got these vegan chocolate bars that people go nuts for; they’re made by Garden of Eden in Hamilton and Thrive in Auckland.

Post-lockdown, are we buying different types of food?

I think people are maintaining that relaxing sense of homeliness, especially while there are a lot of external stresses going on. That means people have kept cooking from scratch, which is great. But everyone’s also going back to their hectic lives, so it’s about maintaining a balance now.

Why don’t more people bulk buy?

There’s a stigma that it’s expensive, but that’s not necessarily the case. Supermarket food is packaged into certain amounts, and we might only need half that, so we over-buy and create a lot of waste. When you’re buying bulk, you only buy what you need. We pay for our food from the shop, we go to the butcher, and then to the supermarket for fruits and vegetables. Our weekly shops are cheaper than they used to be, even though we’re getting higher-quality ingredients, because we don’t need to buy supermarket quantities. We don’t over-buy anymore.

And if you decide to shop on the fly, you need to go home and get your jars.

I’m anti-taking-your-jars-shopping! I’m so clumsy, I’d break them, and I never use anything to the bottom the jar before refilling it. We want our customers to have a comfortable shopping experience, so I recommend leaving your jars and home and bringing reusable paper bags, or using our compostable bags. You can fill them and take them home and transfer them to your jars.

Why was going organic important to you?

We’re not an organic family, we don’t eat completely organic, but anything you can introduce into your diet that’s pesticide or spray-free will be good for you. And organic food is better for the planet – better for the soil and everything around it, and more than anything the quality of the food is better. Where you can eliminate crap, eliminate crap.

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