Mission Grocer (2026)

Project leads: Annalise Myers, Nadine Metzger

Point & Associates worked alongside Auckland City Mission's Mission Grocer to support learning, reflection and future planning during its first year of operation.

Launched in March 2025, Mission Grocer is an innovative response to food insecurity in central Tāmaki Makaurau. Operating from HomeGround on Federal Street and the Whare Kai pop-up in Albert Park, Mission Grocer provides affordable, high-quality kai while centring dignity, choice and participation. It serves Mission whānau, students, city workers, local residents and others, creating a shared space where everyone shops together.

What makes Mission Grocer distinctive is that it moves beyond traditional emergency food provision. Rather than focusing solely on food parcels, the model supports people to choose and purchase food in a welcoming retail environment, creating opportunities for greater agency, dignity and connection. Alongside access to affordable kai, Mission Grocer provides pathways into volunteering and employment, helping strengthen wellbeing, confidence and belonging.

Our role was to walk alongside the Mission Grocer team as an independent research and evaluation partner. Through interviews with staff, volunteers, partners and stakeholders, alongside customer feedback, we have been helping the team pause, reflect and make sense of what has been learned during the first nine months of operation. The creation of a Theory of Change (pictured right), helped make sense of the ways in which Mission Grocer supports change for customers, volunteers and staff and the wider community.

The review highlighted a model that is responding to food insecurity in ways that strengthen dignity, choice and connection. It also helped identify opportunities for Mission Grocer's next phase of development, while clarifying the elements of the model that stakeholders believe are most important to protect as it grows.

For us, the project is an example of the value of reflective evaluation. Rather than waiting until a programme is fully established, learning has been integrated into the journey, creating space to celebrate strengths, understand challenges, and shape the next phase of development in ways that stay true to the kaupapa of dignity, choice, community and affordable access to healthy kai.

Mission Grocer Theory of Change