‘Thousands down the drain’: GrabOne collapse hits Christchurch businesses

Wednesday, 22 October 2025

A popular Christchurch butcher is facing a tough financial blow after daily deals site GrabOne went into liquidation, leaving hundreds of vouchers unpaid.

Halswell Butchery has been part of GrabOne’s voucher programme for “the past five or six years”, offering customers $50 worth of meat for just $30.

“We only do it once a year as a way to say thank you to our customers,” director Brad Williams said.

“It’s also a good way to kick off spring as barbecue days get longer, and it helps get the word out about our shop.”

The vouchers went on sale on October 6, with 1000 sold through GrabOne.

“They sold out straight away over slightly more than a week,” Williams said.

By the time GrabOne went into liquidation last Thursday, Halswell Butchery had redeemed just under 200 vouchers, leaving around 800 outstanding.

“Like many other small New Zealand businesses that participated in the GrabOne programme, we are ourselves a creditor of the company, with a large number of redeemed vouchrs that GrabOne has not yet paid us for,” Williams said.

After the vouchers went on sale, Halswell Butchery was meant to wait four weeks to receive 80% of the voucher value, minus GrabOne’s 17% commission. The remaining 20% was held for an additional four weeks, also subject to the commission.

“We were due to be paid in two weeks, but with the liquidation, we have received nothing,” he said. He estimated the shortfall would come to about $8000 to cover the cost of meat and other expenses.

Unredeemed vouchers are still in circulation. Just after GrabOne went into liquidation, Halswell Butchery posted a notice on its Facebook page, which has 5.9K followers, warning customers it cannot honour the vouchers unless payment is guaranteed by the liquidators or another responsible party.

“This is an unfortunate situation for everyone involved,” Williams said.

“Our team values every one of our customers and understands their frustration. However, absorbing the financial burden of unredeemed vouchers without payment would be unsustainable for a small local business like ours.”

Other local businesses have also been hit hard.

“We haven’t been paid by GrabOne since before the school holidays, even though many people used their vouchers during that time,” said Mark Jenkins, who runs the mini-golf business Alice in Putterland in New Brighton with his wife Hazel.

“The liquidation is a direct hit, literally thousands of dollars down the drain.”

Jenkins said their business had participated in the GrabOne voucher programme for almost three years.

“[Voucher] tickets were priced at $8 for children and $10 for adults. We kept re-running the vouchers because it acted as free advertising.

“GrabOne had a huge reach, and we couldn’t really afford advertising otherwise.”

Customers would a voucher from GrabOne, redeemit at his business, and GrabOne would then mark it as paid.

“We never thought much of it. There were no signs of trouble, and the vouchers were still being sold the morning the site went down,” he said.

He could not confirm how many vouchers had been sold.

“Once GrabOne shut the website, we couldn’t log in to check numbers or payments — it was all locked up.”

Waffle Haus, which opened its new café in The Colombo mall in July, also sold vouchers through GrabOne, offering two waffles for $20.

“The (voucher) programme had worked really, really well, a good promotion to our new store and more foot traffic to the mall.”

So they launched a new voucher, called Super 25, which would run until Christmas, just one day before the platform when down.

They sold about 1000 vouchers for the first deal, but did not know how many Super 25 vouchers had been sold.

The collapse of the platform and the associated losses would be felt by a lot of small businesses and cafés like them, he said.

GrabOne, which employed 15 staff, is said to owe customers and vendor creditors millions of dollars. The company sold a wide range of vouchers, offering discount deals on experiences and products, from travel, to dining vouchers, massages and home office furniture.

Liquidators last week said any unredeemed GrabOne vouchers would not be refunded by the company, and it was up to customers to contact the merchant to see if these would be honoured.