A Note From Dion and Ali

To our Homegrown Family,

Since 2017 we have been delivering our beautiful award winning meat around the country in the form of our Half & Whole Lamb Boxes and Beef Packs from our own farm, expanding our offering slightly in 2020 to add more boxes of what you love. 

July 2019 (which seems like a lifetime ago) we bought Joe's Meat Market in Masterton - 19 km’s from our Bideford farm.  One of the biggest drivers here was to enable us to open up our offering to you all in smaller quantities and individual cuts.  We very quickly closed the doors of Joes for an extensive re-do/makeover and a rebrand to open 8 weeks later in late September as Homegrown Butcher, Deli & Pantry.  We created a space which has been described as an “old fashioned butchery in a modern funky setting”.  It’s become a much loved place to come, explore, get cooking advice and purchase our beautiful Homegrown Farm Fresh Beef, Lamb & Pork.  We also have a deli with in-store crafted Black Puddings, Ham, Salami etc and pantry products that we love and accompany meat.   We are incredibly proud of what our butchery and farming team has been able to accomplish during the last year, it sure has been a ride and a steep learning curve.

Covid-19 has undeniably hit businesses hard especially the smaller food operators like ourselves. We were in a position where our store frontage during Level 3 & 4 had to close only 6 months after opening.  Nationwide online, was thank goodness able to continue and we are extremely grateful with the support we received from you all.  With the store we very quickly pivoted to a second online-only platform with delivery Wairarapa wide repurposing our existing staff for deliveries and Homegrown Farm Fresh Meats continued nationally through our courier network. We were so lucky to be able to do this and have been so humbled by the continued support of our customers through Homegrown Farm Fresh Meats and Homegrown Butchery Online sites.

We have taken this time over the past few months now that things are getting back to our somewhat new normal and the store is physically back open, having a rethink, how now to move forward the best way possible to suit all our customers over both websites while still staying true to who we are and our purpose of what we started back in 2017.

So we have combined both our online sites into one which will sit under the Homegrown Butchery banner. As we move into this new phase of our business we are keeping all of our boxes that you have come to love. And in-fact box product wise nothing is changing. We have combined our websites so you will not only be able to order boxes but you will be able to order all of our individual cuts we have in-store as well as boxes.  This for our team also streamlines processes. Now whether you are shopping our Homegrown online store in Auckland or locally, you will have access to our Homegrown farm fresh Beef, Lamb and now Pork all grown by Dion & I!  We also have a range of artisan produce from producers we love and products that we use, rate and compliment our meat so well. 

The first part of our journey has been one of great pride for us and we hope you join us for the next chapter. 

Thanks again for all your support, it is truly very humbling - and trust me every order that comes through I still do a little happy dance :-)

Cheers & happy meat eating

Dion & Ali