Auckland plastic-free grocer GoodFor expanding nationwide

Monday, 4 December 2017

GoodFor wholesale refillery, a grocery store aimed at cutting down on plastic use, is expanding nationwide next year.

Auckland's wholefoods refillery Goodfor will soon be a nationwide chain.

The grocer plans to open three stores in Wellington in mid-2018 for customers looking to limit their use of plastic.

GoodFor owner James Denton says since opening his flagship store in March he's been 'slammed' with requests to expand to other cities.

The store offers goods in bulk to customers who bring their own mason jars and storage boxes, which are weighed as they enter the store. From laundry detergent to pasta, everything gets paid for by weight.

Owner and manager James Denton, 29, expects to finalise agreements with franchisees in Christchurch, Tauranga, and New Plymouth by February next year.

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The business' PledgeMe page for the nationwide expansion raised more than $20,000 over the past month.

The first Wellington store will open in Seatoun in the middle of next year, run by Denton's brother Paul, who is moving to the capital to oversee renovations.

James Denton said the choice to set up shop in Seatoun was because he had heard the area was 'up and coming'.

He said he hopes to eventually franchise out the Seatoun location once it was established.

The two additional stores in Wellington will be owned by a franchisee, Denton said.

He opened the flagship store in March this year in Grey Lynn, Auckland after seeing the store model operating successfully in Australia.

It has since had more than 30,000 customers shop there.

'We've been slammed since we opened with people telling us to go other places.'

Denton said people were becoming more aware of the problem of plastic waste, and said stores like his encouraged the perception that 'it's actually an easier shift than you'd think'.

He said he does not like to focus on plastic bags because they were part of a wider issue.

'Plastic bags are only .001 per cent of the problem, we fill those up with a lot more harmful plastic than the bags themselves. But people are fixated on them.'

Because mainstream supermarkets like Countdown, Pak n Save, and New World are only making efforts at cutting out plastic bags and not the plastic packaging, Denton does not see them as competitors for his customer base.

'We go a lot further and we're growing in a massive way.'

A United Kingdon study in 2008 estimated that 33 per cent of plastic packaging waste came from food.

Statistics New Zealand found between 1994 to 2007 the average packaging waste a single person discarded grew from 126 kilograms to 162 kilograms a year. The latter amounts to 684,985 tonnes of plastic across the country.

The Packaging Council New Zealand found consumption had grown to about 735,000 tonnes of packaging, of which only 58 per cent was recycled.

Our Seas Our Future spokesman Danny Rood said having a national chain that cut down on plastic containers would have a real impact on New Zealand's plastic footprint.

'Often, consumers are constricted in their consumer choices in terms of plastic.'

'A store that tackles this issue head-on will have real benefits for everyday Kiwis making everyday purchases.'

Rood said the total per cent of Type 5 plastics (typical of food packaging) was relatively small but it still had an observable impact on oceans and marine life.