My Food Bag says hello to Christchurch

Preparing the evening meal is about to get a whole lot easier for Christchurch people as My Food Bag brings its successful home delivery service to the Garden City.

My Food Bag is a home delivery service providing quality, free range ingredients together with nutritional seasonal recipes prepared by 2011 MasterChef Nadia Lim and her test kitchen team.

Launched originally in Auckland in March 2013, My Food Bag expanded to Hamilton in June and Wellington in August last year and in to the greater Waikato and Tauranga in August this year.

It was developed by 2013 EY Young Entrepreneur of the Year Cecilia Robinson together with Nadia Lim and prominent business leader Theresa Gattung.

Ms Gattung says Cantabrians have been asking for My Food Bag so the team has been working hard to get the service up and running there.

“This is a big move for My Food Bag and we have had to work hard to get our distribution right and work with suppliers so we have only the best fresh ingredients and free range products available.

“From October 28 food lovers in Christchurch will be able to go online and order their choice of our three food bags with first deliveries being made Sunday November 9,” Ms Gattung says.

“And there’s good news for local suppliers – because we source ingredients locally wherever we can we’ve already signed up several meat suppliers and we’ll be using local markets to source fresh fruit and veges.”

My Food Bag chef and dietitian Nadia Lim says she’s very much looking forward to adding some southern spirit to the My Food Bag recipe book.

“Eating healthy has to be fun and taste great and our cooking style is seasonally focused. That means we’ll be sure to have our noses to the ground in the Christchurch markets searching out the local favourites. And of course we are always open to suggestions,” Ms Lim says.

“And good news with the festive season just around the corner –our popular Christmas Bag will also be available to those living in Christchurch so we hope that will be an early Christmas present for those hosting the family this year.” 

To service Christchurch food lovers, a distribution centre creating seven part time jobs is being set up close to Addington.

Local suppliers to My Food Bag include epicurean butchers Peter Timbs Meats and Canter Valley which provides gourmet poultry products. 

My Food Bag now services Auckland, Wellington, Hamilton and the greater Waikato area, Tauranga and Christchurch.

How My Food Bag works
My Food Bag is about bringing the fun back into cooking by creating innovative and exciting dishes while embracing Nadia Lim’s healthy eating philosophy. Each bag contains ingredients for dinners alongside recipes designed by Nadia Lim that are simple to prepare, big on flavour, healthy and delicious.

On a Sunday each week, customers receive the recipes and ingredients for main meals.  With each delivery, Nadia provides notes for that week that include useful cooking tips and how to keep leftovers, among other handy hints. 

• Currently there are three types of bag. The Classic for a family of four to five people costs $189 for five meals and includes tasty dishes such as fish wraps with chipotle mayo and salad, crispy chicken tenders with chunky fries, slaw and sweet chilli mayo and cajun beef with chimmi churri sauce, corn and tomato quinoa salad.

• The Family Bag costs $159 for five meals, is designed for parents of two or three younger children under 10 and has smaller portion sizes. Families can expect meals such as crusted fish with roast potato and salad, mediterranean vegetable, feta and avocado pizza, sesame chicken and spring vegetable stir-fry.

• The Gourmet Bag costs $139 for four meals for two people and includes ingredients and recipes combining international tastes, food trends and the best of local ingredients to bring global food flavours in to the home.  Customers can expect meals such as duck-breast with carrot, snow peas and plum sauce soba noodles, herb crusted lamb loin with roast potato salad and pork balls in caramelised chilli sauce with choy sum and coconut rice.

All three bag offerings include free delivery and add-ons available include two sizes of fruit bags and the recently launched My Wine Match.

The Classic Bag costs around $9.45 a meal per person, the Family Bag $6.36 per person and the Gourmet Bag, $17.38.  Home cooks do need to provide some basic pantry items such as oils, flours, condiments and the like.  But otherwise, everything else required is in My Food Bag.

Christchurch delivery areas:
Deliveries will be made to the all the main Christchurch suburbs. For a full list of delivery postcodes please see notes to editors below.

More details at www.myfoodbag.co.nz

About My Food Bag:
My Food Bag is a home delivery service where customers who order online receive food bags containing the ingredients and recipes for a week’s main meals. All the ingredients are fresh, free range and locally sourced wherever possible. The recipes are exclusive to My Food Bag and have been developed by My Food Bag’s test kitchen team and 2011 Masterchef winner Nadia Lim. The recipes also include nutritional analysis and cooking tips. The business is the brainchild of entrepreneur Cecilia Robinson who is the group CEO and also runs My Food Bag in Australia. Leading New Zealand businesswoman Theresa Gattung is an active shareholder and is New Zealand CEO. Visit www.myfoodbag.co.nz