To The Free Store

Angel Vic-Marie (all pronouns) 

To the Free Store Wellington, 

I want to tell you how I feel. 

It’s grief and anger. It’s frustration and it’s hunger.

On the 11^th of June 2025, I was scrolling through Facebook when I saw a post from The Free Store—a gutting announcement that it would be scaling back its Monday to Friday food redistribution programme to a “slimmed-down” schedule of Monday, Wednesday, and Friday. Okay, I thought. Abrupt, yes, but not entirely unexpected. Especially after the trolley-toting volunteers had reported a number of issues, including concerns about volunteer safety while collecting food (the reason cited in the edited post). As someone who’s been eating with and volunteering at The Free Store for close to three years, this news caused great hōhā for myself and others. It meant many would go without food on the days the store wasn’t operating—people with families and children, elderly people, and the unemployed. In the final months of The Free Store, I even saw many rangatahi and students coming by, though they didn’t tend to return after standing in line with the rest of us. Maybe they found other ways to get food, found jobs, or went to Everybody Eats at Dixon Street.But for many—those with bigger families, or those with no koha for Everybody Eats—The Free Store was a vital way to get weekly groceries. In 2024 alone, The Free Store redistributed over 40,000 kilograms of food, serving 100–200 people daily. The breads, baked goods, sandwiches, veges, and fruit lasted longer than just one meal, unlike at Everybody Eats, or The Sisters of Compassion Soup Kitchen. That’s not to disparage either of those places! They, alongside other redistribution organisations like Kaibosh or Ekta, do the undercelebrated māhi and help those in need. But personally, The Free Store was the one I relied on the most. There was something about standing in the rain, the wind, the smoke from cigarettes blowing into my face. Shoulder to shoulder with Daniel the guitarist, Eddie the horror movie fan, and Pete the jokester. Buskers, benefit-users, and homeless alike—we stood together. 

Absent from my reminiscence so far is the location of The Free Store: St Peter’s Church. For many, this might not seem as vexing as I found it in the beginning, but as someone who felt deeply alienated from the Church—despite religious parents and Christmas Mass—my discomfort stemmed in part from my gender. St. Peter’s Church, though, offered a welcoming community, and a pastor who would stand among the lines waiting for food, dressed in civvies but still wearing her collar. They have a rainbow flag which stretches nearly wall to wall above the pews, and outside their door, St Peter’s displays a range of symbols, including a Star of David and other religious and spiritual insignia. The point is: everyone is welcome there. The message was reinforced by their generous patronage of The Free Store, which for fifteen years was run from a shipping container in their parking lot. St Peter’s on Willis St—and The Free Store—healed a wound I still carried from religion, from fears of damnation and the self-flagellation I had held myself to until I stopped believing altogether. Seeing the community gather, and this church so warmly welcome everybody— no matter their age, race, gender, sexuality, culture, religion, and circumstance—was something that helped lift me, in part, from depressive psychosis during late 2024 into early this year. They say chicken soup is the cure to everything. For everything? I’m not sure. But it sure warmed me up from the cold—to drink tea and coffee, snack on buttered bread, and eat soup made by Alicia, an aunty of The Free Store—before waiting in line.  

The Free Store meant a lot to me. The church did too—it still does. But the spirit of  The Free Store has fled its grounds, like the smell of flowers fleeing the frost of winter. 

I said I wouldn’t be biased and speak disparagingly of other organisations—because, as I’ve said, they all do great mahi. Still, the experiences that made The Free Store such a crucial lifeline also give me the right to speak honestly about how it failed us—its volunteers and dependents alike. 

The month went fast. Friday, 11 July: it was time. While we were waiting in line for kai, a facilitator called for the attention of the crowd of regulars I’ve been seeing for years, and some first timers. “This will be the last day of The Free Store.” Shock and a great hōhā rumbled through the crowd; because of the first Facebook post, and messages from Free Store personnel, we were given some sliver of hope that—somehow—The Free Store might live on in some other form. This final rug-pull told us it would not. I spoke to many on that day—regulars, some of the staff—and no one could agree on a reason as to why Wellingtonians were losing an important source of kai, indicating a lack of coherent communication. As the handout on Friday July 11th says:

“We genuinely believed there was a high chance The Free Store would continue and that we wouldn’t need to close. We want to offer our apologies where we created a lack of transparency and clarity for this community [...] We feel deeply saddened by the pain this has caused some of you and we are sorry. [...] 

Ngā mihi nui, The Free Store Board.”

On that final day, The Free Store attempted to soften the blow with pizza and donuts in the undercroft of St Peter’s, following the traditional kai line-up, and planned more events in July focused on kai and reconciliation. But being treated like a dog needing treats after being stepped on felt less dignified, in my opinion. Sure, The Free Store didn’t have to do that—I’ll concede that—but the gesture didn’t mend the tremendous breach of trust.

For fifteen years, volunteers like myself would brave storms and streets, collecting food every Monday to Friday with few exceptions. That the organization would suddenly shut down so abruptly?  It was deeply demoralising. I found myself worrying about how I'd feed myself and my (then) unemployed partner. If that was meant to be an apology, it felt like a rubbish one. 

Therapy over the past year has taught me patience and understanding for others. I hope my anger and frustration doesn’t seem unwarranted. I don’t just want to hear ngā mihi nui—I think an aroha mai is in order first. 

In their handout, the team do acknowledge the lack of transparency and clarity in  their now-deleted post, as well as in their in-person communication. As someone in one of the inner lanes, I still don’t feel the reasons behind The Free Store’s closure are clear —although maybe that’s me being wilful. 

It’s a deeply dissatisfying ending. In an interview with Stuff, Scottie Reeve says,

“I think all charities are finding it tough at the moment. The story we've heard from many of them is that they are overworked, that they are finding the climate very hard to operate in, both financially and with the growing needs of people.”

I wish we could learn more about why such an important resource was shut down. But out of respect and compassion, I won’t speculate. It’s not my place, and the moment has passed. I can move on, I’ll take myself to another food bank, another soup kitchen. But I’ll mourn the great kōrero, the great people, and the welcoming energy of The Free Store while I remain angry about it. As even Reeve acknowledges, 

“The food has really become the place around which a community gathers, and that community of people is who we're most wanting to do right by this time and make sure that they still have places to connect and belong and share together.”

Losing that connection to a community of people without socials or numbers, or emails or fixed addresses, is probably the biggest impact I’ve had from the closure. I don’t miss The Free Store as a place, but The Free Store as a community. The void it leaves with its closure makes me wonder, where do we go for community now? I would like to share the following excerpt from a piece I wrote, with kai and excess in mind:  

It’s like my church—besides the fact that the non-profit is set up outside of one. Where I once ate with folly and purged in my childishness, I now partake in the very grown-up act of being too poor to afford groceries. 

I  genuflect and tie my shoelace as I line up at the food bank. I go whenever I can,  collecting a range of items: bagged lettuce, boxed desserts, soon-stale bread.  The shelves overflow with bread—loaves, sticks, bags, boxes of this wheaty goodness. This particular operation runs on excess: food that cafés and restaurants around the Wellington CBD couldn’t sell during opening hours. Bread is the most common donation—big plastic bags and vanloads of it, given away by bakeries. Bread: food for the poor. The food no one else will eat.  

For someone with a complicated relationship with excess and overconsumption, this is a significant fact. There’s something poetic in the vicious cycle of food. Without excess—many streeties, the people you might see busking or begging on the footpaths—would starve. But why are some forced to be content with scraps, leftovers, with what overflows from the mouths and wallets of others rather than being granted a living of their own. Why is it that without charity, families with multiple children would go without, that young people like me, done wrong by the shifting political climate, would go hungry. Why on earth isn’t there a living universal income for everyone?

When I stand in line at the foodbank, I know I’m privileged. Only in the last few months have other young students like me started lining up alongside streeties and elderly folks who’ve been coming to the foodbank for years. Like them, I “have an advantage” because I don’t “look” poor or struggling.  I’m still working sometimes, despite my support needs as a disabled person. I rent a flat with double-glazed windows. I can pay my own bills. But I still have to come to the food bank. I show up to volunteer on Thursdays and  Fridays, and I run three blocks to get from one food bank to another.  

Food waste will never not be an “ick” of mine. I know what hunger feels like. I know the food could feed so many. It is outrageous that businesses mandate the disposal of tonnes of salvageable, donatable food. 

Why is there too much and not enough at the same time in countries that are so-called “first world”? Why do so many people have to rely on the charity of others  to have less than enough? Why is the excess never enough to feed everyone?

Having written this before the announcement of The Free Store’s closure, the dramatic irony hurts me. I wonder here what will happen to people who rely on The Free Store. I worry about the systems that produce so much, and yet leave people hungry. Those worries aren’t philosophy anymore. Now, I worry for the future of Wellington.