June 2, 2026

Why one new truck matters at Kaibosh – and why people matter even more.

As our 2026 annual appeal wraps up, Board Member Toni reflects on our goal (to fund a new truck) and what the real driving force is at Kaibosh – the collective impact of our community of supporters.

When you look at Aotearoa’s big food system challenges, it can feel a bit like the mountain in the old story classic, The Little Engine That Could.

The scale of the challenge seems so, so steep. Issues like food insecurity, rising costs, fuel crises and fragile supply chains all connect to form one long, heavy cargo load.

But the message of that childhood story reminds us that progress often starts with the small engine, rather than the big ones. The one that is willing to try, help out, and keep moving even against impossibly high odds. 

Kaibosh is a bit like that little engine. But unlike the storybook engine, our strength doesn’t come from one machine alone. It comes from hundreds of volunteers, donors, community organisations, food businesses, growers and supporters all pulling in the same direction.

We started as one woman and one volunteer with one little car collecting food from one food business in 2008. Year by year, we’ve grown from a team in Pōneke, to the second site in Te Awa Kairangi and then expansion into Kāpiti and Horowhenua – all with incredible support from donors, funders, food businesses, growers and hundreds of volunteers. Every kilometre we travel and every kilogram of kai we rescue is the result of people choosing to contribute their time, resources and expertise.

Every May, Kaibosh runs an annual appeal to raise money and awareness for our mission of ‘Zero Food Poverty, Zero Food Waste’. This year’s theme – Moving Kai in May – had a simple focus: help us keep good kai moving, for a resilient food network. Funds raised from this campaign will help Kaibosh secure a BIG(ger) low-emissions truck to expand the Second Harvest programme. This initiative collaborates with local growers to capture more healthy kai at the source, for distribution to local whānau.

While May has ended, donations can be made in June to help stretch to reach this goal! Any amount you can give will help. Collectively, it all adds up to make a big impact for our communities. Please chip in to help Kaibosh if you are able.

We are not the biggest player in the food system. We don’t grow the food, or set the prices. What we do is move food every day from where it is surplus, to where it is needed most. “A logistics company with heart” as our CE Susie Robertson lovingly calls us. And like the little engine, we keep going even when the hill gets steeper, thanks to a whole lot of determination and community support.

The steep food security challenge

A deeper, recurring question sits behind our annual campaigns. How can a country that produces so much food still have households that struggle to access it? A blog after last year’s campaign explored some of the complex systemic, factors that can contribute to food poverty.

Other recent national debates have swirled around food security and resilience in the face of a volatile global trade environment and the fuel crisis. Food HQ CEO Dr Victoria Hatton recently reflected on discussion from the 2026 E Tipu NZ Future Food and Fibre Summit, noting that our country’s food insecurity is less about how much food we grow and where we sell it, but how much food we lose, waste or fail to use where it’s needed. She reflects, “Food waste is not a side issue to food security. In a country that produces enough for 40 million people, food waste is the mechanism by which abundance fails to translate into access.”

The scale of preventable food loss & waste – and why we’re focusing upstream

Food loss and waste in our domestic supply chain is a clear sign of this distribution gap. The MfE Baseline Food Loss and Waste Report found that 1.22 million tonnes of food is lost or wasted in Aotearoa every year. That’s 237kg per capita, per year. GHG emissions from food waste are also a significant contributor to climate change.

We’re probably more aware of the food waste in our own homes, but what’s often less visible is loss that happens before food even reaches the shelves. At the primary production and processing stages – with our growers, pickers and packers – large amounts of food can be lost because of cosmetic standards, unpredictable weather, storage gaps, or sadly because it is cheaper to discard than distribute. This is a significant proportion of our food lost where smarter systems can make a difference.

There is good news here. Across the country, innovative organisations and companies are working to reduce food waste at the source. Hectre was one of the big success stories of the 2026 NZ Hi Tech awards – a company focused on helping growers measure fruit more accurately and reduce loss in orchards (earning them the Agritech Innovation award and the Hi-Tech Māori Company of the Year). 

These cutting-edge solutions matter, though surplus food will continue to be a reality due to ongoing weather events, market shifts, or even crops that don’t grow to spec. And our growers want to see their local communities nourished and thriving. That is why Kaibosh is working further afield (excuse the pun) to our Second Harvest project.

When the wheels fall off!! Distribution the missing link

Distribution is the quiet backbone of food security. It’s the trucks, drivers, cold storage, staff, volunteers, food donors, community partners and coordination that keep fresh kai moving. Logistics may look like vehicles and warehouses, but ultimately it’s a people-powered system.

When any part of our food supply chain becomes strained, the whole system feels it. Kaibosh sits right at this pressure point and sees every day how fragile and time-sensitive the movement of fresh, healthy kai can be.

The current fuel crisis is making this even harder. Transport costs are rising sharply at the same time that people need more support and Kaibosh – along with our other food rescue organisations across the motu – have felt that pressure immediately. So have our individual volunteers and their families. Every extra dollar spent on more fuel is a dollar not spent on rescuing more food.

In recent years, with the help of some incredible sponsors and partners, we’ve been growing our fleet of electric vans and working to reduce our carbon footprint while continuing to transport large volumes of fresh food. Now we need help to get a new low-emissions truck to rescue more farm-fresh kai for whānau across the Wellington region.

Why a single truck matters

A humble truck might seem like a small, trivial thing. The truck itself is only part of the story.

Every extra pallet of rescued kai represents food business or grower sharing surplus, volunteers giving their time, community organisations distributing food, and supporters helping cover the costs of getting it there.

We are all pulling and up the steep face of national food system challenges. Progress requires coordinated action across government, industry, iwi, communities and households. No single organisation can shift a system alone.

But in logistics, small things can also determine whether food moves or stalls on any given day. A new truck for Kaibosh means better flexibility for our staff and volunteers and greater capacity for our Second Harvest work. It’s not a silver bullet for the bigger challenges – but we know that one truck will make a big impact moving healthy kai to our community providers, and improve wellbeing for many local whānau, today.

Just like the little engine, Kaibosh keeps moving because we believe in what is possible. 

We think we can. And with our community behind us, we know we can.