The Happy Puku

It is a Tuesday at Greerton Hall in central Tauranga and the kitchen is a blur of activity.

A team from The Happy Puku is busy preparing meals for some of the city’s most vulnerable people. People living in emergency accommodation, transitional housing, those sleeping in their cars, or on the street. People who are facing financial difficulties. People who have Covid-19, or who are still suffering as a result of having had Covid-19. The Happy Puku is a social enterprise catering company that works under the umbrella of Te Tuinga Whānau Support Services Trust. It is led by husband and wife team Stephen and Tracey Wilson.

“If somebody in the community presents a dire need, then we're sensitive to that,” Tracey says.

Every week The Happy Puku cooks between 150 and 300 free meals for the community. During the peaks of the Covid-19 pandemic, that grew to as many as 400-500 a week. The meals are delivered all over Tauranga. So what’s on the menu this cold, wet winter? Lasagne, shepherd’s pie, sausage casserole with couscous, chilli con carne.

“We try and do healthy meals,” Stephen says. “They’re getting fed very well.”

He says The Happy Puku has a partnership with Ngapeke Permaculture in Welcome Bay and twice a week a member of the team visits the gardens to source fresh ingredients.

“We’ve planted a lot of our own garlic and we use a lot of the spinach and a lot of the fresh herbs, the kūmara. So that goes into the fresh kai. It’s kaupapa Māori behind what we are doing.”

The Happy Puku, often helped by volunteers from the community, use the kitchen facilities at Greerton Hall to prepare and cook the free meals one to three days a week, depending on the level of need. In the past two years, they estimate they have made at least 10,000 of these meals. And the need is not going away anytime soon. Stephen says he and his team see it firsthand. They recently found a shivering man with a blanket lying in a doorway. They made him a steaming hot cup of tea, a meal, gave him a sleeping bag, and then connected him with a social worker who managed to find some emergency accommodation.

“So that was a good outcome, but how many people are out there at the moment in this kind of weather?” Stephen says.

“We're noticing that there's increasing financial pressure on people. Even people who are working.”

The Happy Puku receives support from a local church to help fund the community meals, and members of the public donate ingredients including the more expensive items such as meat. The Happy Puku also caters weddings, business functions, conferences, and other events and that income helps keep the free meals going.

Stephen also teaches young kids who are struggling at school how to cut an onion and cook.The other main mission of The Happy Puku is hiring and upskilling staff who have come from difficult backgrounds and challenging situations – prison, homelessness, addiction, sustained unemployment.

Stephen and Tracey and their team, which includes professional chefs with decades of experience, teach these new staff the skills of hospitality and provide them with employment and the training needed to enter the industry and turn their lives around.

“But the bottom line is, get them on their feet and confident enough to be able to work and feel valued,” Stephen says. Be patient. Supportive. Celebrate milestones. 

Tracey says all she really wants to do is release the potential in other people. And she and Stephen have seen that happen, they have watched their staff flourish and create their own opportunities.

“Once they feel they are in a safe environment, and they feel that they’re valued, we just see the huge potential in the people we’re working with; they have so much to give,” Stephen says.

And at the end of the day, when the cooking is complete, it becomes about so much more, about sitting around a table with kai, talking, connecting.

The Happy Puku is about bringing people together.