The Hutt Valley man whose hāngī hankering became a business

When CJ Collier had a craving for a good hāngī but could find nowhere to buy one, he figured there was an untapped market to be served.

The young father started preparing the traditional Māori meal in his family garage four years ago.

Now Collier makes hundreds of hāngī a week and sells them at six locations around Lower Hutt, and has an ambitious goal to make them available within a 10-minute drive for the whole Wellington region.

Collier who affiliates to Te Aitangaa-Māhaki, told RNZ’s Nine to Noon it was “crazy,” that in a multicultural city Māori food was unavailable.

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“In every town you can get Indian food, Chinese food, Thai food, but you can't get any Māori food in the wider Wellington region on a weekday. The idea started from there."

He decided to test the market, he said, initially setting up pick up points through the region.

"We started in Upper Hutt, and I was doing home deliveries to just Upper Hutt. And people from Lower Hutt saw our advertising and were like, would you be able to do like a little pickup point for us in Lower Hutt?”

Interest grew with requests for pick up points in Porirua and Wellington, that worked well for a while, he said.

“We were going to more and more locations. I think at the time, we're doing about eight different locations over the wider Wellington region.

“But when it got into winter time, we'd start getting problems with it getting too dark, because we'd only have a small pickup window between 5pm and 6pm, because we wanted to make sure the hāngī was fresh.”

The fledgling business then pivoted.

“So, we steered the business to being in stores rather than on the side of the road.

“And soon as we got into the stores, we were able to put the hāngī into pie warmers, which meant that they could be there for a lot longer throughout the day, and we started doing from lunch times onwards. after that.”

The business has a dozen outlets now and is pumping out hāngī to hundreds of customers.

“On a real busy week we can do 1000 or up to 2000 on our really, really busy weeks, which would be like Matariki or Māori language week.

“On average, I'd say throughout the whole year would probably average around 700.”

The business is about more than feeding people, Collier said.

“Having hāngī reminds me of my whanau and close family friends, because whenever we'd have it growing up as a kid, it would be for special occasions, for birthdays or tangi or people coming back from overseas.

“For me having a hāngī was a connection to my whanau.”

He believes that connection will be there for many of his customers.

"For a lot of Māori people that have our hāngī, they have that same sort of connection.

“I feel now that I've got this responsibility to carry on and keep making these hāngī so that more and more people can be reminded of these memories from when they were younger, and remind them of their whanau and whanau that they haven't seen in a while, and maybe whanau that have passed on as well.”