The Soup Kitchen
Eighty hot meals. Three days a week. On the main street of Kaikohe, where anyone can walk in and nobody has to explain themselves.
How it began
It started because a grandfather could not watch a child go hungry.
No board meeting. No funding round. No strategic plan. Just an Elder, a pot of soup, and a decision he made on his own.
Our Elder, the late Teporohau Ruka Te Korako, saw what everybody in town could see and most people had learned to walk past. Tamariki coming to school without breakfast. Kuia and koroua stretching a week of groceries into two. Working people going quiet about the fact that the money ran out on Tuesday.
He did not wait for permission. He did not wait for a grant. He put a pot on, called his whanau in, and started handing out soup to whoever needed it.
That is the whole origin story. It is not complicated. It has just never stopped.
Teporohau has since passed. His whanau did not close the doors. They opened them the following week, and the week after that, and they have kept opening them ever since. Three times a week, the pots go on. Three times a week, roughly eighty people eat.
A soup kitchen is easy to start. What is rare is one that outlives the person who started it.
Eighty meals, three services a week, is more than two hundred and forty meals every seven days and over twelve thousand a year. Every one of them is cooked and served by volunteers.
In memory
Teporohau Ruka Te Korako
Our Elder carried the traditions of Waitaha and spoke them into the world, but he measured his own work by something plainer than that. He wanted to know whether the people around him had eaten.
He believed that mana is not what you say about your people. It is what you hand them. A warm bowl, given without a form to fill in and without a single question about why you needed it, is a statement about who somebody is worth.
He built the soup kitchen on that idea and then he handed it to his whanau, not as an asset but as an obligation.
They have kept it.
Monday, Wednesday, Friday · 4pm to 7pm
What actually happens on the main street.
It begins about seven hours before the doors open. Somebody is at the wok long before the first person arrives. Somebody else is counting bowls, checking what came in from the grocers, working out how far today’s donation will stretch.
By four o’clock the pots are full. Then the people come. Some are regulars who have eaten here for years. Some are new and stand near the door for a while before they come to the counter. Nobody is asked to prove anything.
There is a koha box on the counter. It sits there quietly. If you can give, you give. If you cannot, you eat anyway. That is the rule and it has never changed.
The pots go on before the town wakes up.
The counter. No forms, no questions, no proof required.
The whanau who keep it open. All volunteers.
Where we are
Donated kai gets us most of the way. It does not get us all the way.
We want to be straight with you, because the people who support us have earned that.
Our donors carry an enormous share of this. Local growers, grocers, businesses and families in this district send ingredients through the door week after week and ask for nothing back. Without them this kitchen would have closed years ago.
What they cannot cover, we buy. Feeding eighty people three times a week still costs us about $1,719 a month in food and supplies on top of everything that is given. That bill arrives whether or not the donations did.
Then there is the building. Power runs $800 to $900 a month on its own. Add stationery and office costs, the van that has to stay road legal, and the equipment that is one breakdown away from a service we cannot run.
Nobody donates a power bill. Nobody drops off a warrant of fitness. Those are the costs that quietly close kitchens like ours.
We have never been short of hands or short of heart. We are short of the unglamorous money that keeps the doors open.
Accountability
Where your koha goes.
We are a volunteer operation. No salaries come out of what you give. Here is what it actually costs to keep three services a week running.
A hot meal costs us about $2.66 to put on the counter. Multiply that by eighty, three times a week.
| What it pays for | Per month |
|---|---|
| Food and supplies we buy, on top of everything donated | $1,719 |
| Power | $800 to $900 |
| Office and stationery | $200 |
| Van: road user charges and warrant of fitness | Being confirmed |
| Known monthly cost of keeping the doors open | About $2,770 |
All figures in New Zealand dollars, reviewed October 2026. Vehicle compliance costs are still being confirmed and are not included in the total. The Soup Kitchen is run entirely by volunteers and no koha is used for wages. Each service takes about seven hours of preparation before the doors open.
How to help
Three ways in, and all three matter.
Give what you actually have. Money is the hardest thing for us to find, but it is not the only thing that keeps this kitchen running.
Give
A monthly gift, even a small one, is worth more to us than a single large one, because a power bill is monthly too. Regular giving is what lets us plan past next week.
Supply
Growers, grocers, butchers, bakers and wholesalers: bulk ingredients, packaging and cleaning supplies go straight into the next service. So does commercial kitchen equipment you are replacing.
Serve
Prep, cooking, serving, dishes, deliveries. If you can give a morning, we will find you something to do. Bring a friend and give us two.
Tautoko
Keep the doors open.
Our Elder started this with a pot of soup and a decision. Every gift is somebody else making the same decision he did.
Donations are processed securely by PayPal. You do not need a PayPal account to give by card. Gifts are received by the Sacred Church of Waitaha, run under the auspices of the Grandfather Council.
Supply or volunteer
Tell us what you can bring.
Ingredients, kitchen equipment, a morning of your time, or a question about any of it. Send us a note and one of the whanau will come back to you.
Come in
You are welcome at the counter.
Whether you are hungry, whether you want to help, or whether you just want to see what our Elder built, the door is open on service days.
Where
The Grandmothers & Grandfathers
of Waitaha Soup Kitchen
86 Lower Broadway Street
Kaikohe 0405, Northland
Aotearoa New Zealand
When
Monday, Wednesday and Friday
4pm to 7pm
Contact
waitahagmgfsk@gmail.com
[EDIT: phone]
Nau te rourou, naku te rourou, ka ora ai te iwi.
With your basket and my basket, the people will thrive.
Te Rerenga Wairua