The Family Kitchen - Unit 5

The Family Kitchen story starts in 2014: City boy James meets country girl Kirst. Of all the things this couple shared in common, the pleasures of lovingly prepared fresh food stood out.

Before long they were spending their free time together at home in the kitchen, with their babies. Cooking, tasting, eating, and cooking some more. Sprawling Sunday lunches with family gathered at the table. Slow feasts prepared for family and friends. For no bigger reward than seeing their own pleasure reflected on every face and a plate or five being licked clean.

So many fresh meals loved and shared, so many cooking classes attended, so many recipes swapped, so many family members combined into one family. Two more babies later Kirst and James have their perfect family of eight.

Years of planning, experimentation, researching and refining lead to Kirst and James taking the plunge. They realised their lifetime dream of delivering fresh meals prepared and cooked with love, to busy Kiwis. In 2019, the family left behind their busy life in Auckland and moved to Mt Maunganui.

Their new life in Papamoa, with a gorgeous boutique café, saw them serving locals freshly cooked healthy meals. With their amazing team showing such care and skill delivering their fresh food service, they find themselves with time to explore the problem every busy Kiwi runs up against: “what’s for dinner?”

It’s also the question they hear most constantly from all their children.

Kirst and James know how life can get in the way of doing the wonderful things that bring health, harmony and happiness to families. They know what it is to lead a full and interesting life, and how that can sometimes steal time away from the kitchen. They’ve experienced plenty of frustrations when it comes to finding fresh family meals with those unique, home cooked qualities of heartiness, flavour and nourishment.

They created The Family Kitchen to make home cooked meals with love, care and attention. So that everyday Kiwis can eat well at home whenever they want without sacrificing the interests and activities that add flavour and meaning to their lives.