Staff at the New World supermarket in Whitianga are back on the water for another summer, delivering groceries to the Coromandel Peninsula by boat and skipping the gridlock that clogs the region's roads each holiday season.
The service, known as Waka Kai, has run every summer since 2019, with New World taking to the sea to avoid the worst of the summer traffic. Demand has grown to the point where the operation upgraded to a larger vessel ahead of the most recent season, a change that Kerry Stanley, who runs the service, says has already paid off.
"The old saying 'we're going to need a bigger boat' has come true for New World Whitianga's Waka Kai for sure," Stanley said. "It's 11.2 metres long so we can get up to 850 kilos of groceries at a time. We've been putting that to the test already with over four tonnes of groceries delivered in the first week."
The Coromandel Peninsula attracts hundreds of thousands of visitors over summer, and the accompanying traffic makes road-based deliveries painfully slow. Stanley said New World did the maths and found that water-based delivery made a significant difference to turnaround times.
"We realised that, as people who know the Coromandel well know, it's one of the most beautiful places in New Zealand but the roads are challenging over summer because a lot of people want to come and enjoy that lovely holiday experience so it made it pretty difficult for our vans to deliver in a timely manner," he said.
Waka Kai travels as far as Pauanui, which is 60 kilometres away by road. That journey takes around an hour and a half by car in summer conditions, while the boat completes the same run in about 45 minutes.
Stanley says the goal of the service is to let people relax rather than sit in traffic on the way to the supermarket. He spoke about a recent trip out on the water that summed up what the operation is about.
"I was out on Waka Kai [on Sunday], we met some lovely people, big orders as they're all expecting family and friends at this time of year, but they were just so relaxed and enjoying the service."
