Orders open 8am Tuesday 31st May!

Dear Yum Jar Whānau,

Thanks for bearing with us this week while we have had to close...
For those interested, last Monday the big old extraction fan unit in our small kitchen just completely stopped working. We carried on, needing to get orders out in time, but in a couple hours, the kitchen was a super sauna with 6x 30L pots bubbling away, even with all the windows wide and small fans we had on! It was going to take a lot of work to fix (read, replace), so we had to arrange a time when we would be out of the kitchen during the week to get this sorted. Thankfully this work is getting done this week, and should be completed before Monday June 6th, when we are able to start up again.

Consequently, orders are opening up today!
You will notice some changes to the organisation of the website, and also, the pricing of our products.

The most important change to note is that there is a new order cut-off time of Midnight Thursdays, just 24 hours earlier than it was. Recently with our increase in orders, the admin has been taking up more and more time, and become more impossible to get done in time. We really need this extra day to get everything sorted (yes, including the nutritional info, which got put on the backburner again, sorry!) It also feels like we've had a minimum of 2 people sick per week for months, which has greatly impacted our organisation. With this extra day, we know that we can provide a better, more organised service, with more promptly updated info about our recipes, and that we can get our veggies ordered in time for our suppliers to source the best, freshest produce for us, which we know our customers will appreciate.

Price Adjustments
It's been a pretty crazy few years, not just for us, but for the entire world. There's so much going on internationally that is affecting even us in our little corner of the earth. Food and transport costs have skyrocketed, both for local and imported products. We have tried to absorb as much of the increase in costs of goods into our existing pricing as we can, but we are unable to continue as an economically sustainable business if we don't bite the bullet now, and increase our prices.

As a business that has from the very start pushed against the status quo, to offer fair working conditions and fair prices, it's a hard fact to accept that we can't stay 'affordable' for everyone out there. But we have been finding ourselves operating at the capacity our current facility allows, and even with some streamlining to our existing systems to smooth out the cracks, we haven't been able to make any profit from our service. And simply put, if we can't make a profit, we can't grow any further as a business. Consequently, we have had to raise the prices of our Meal Boxes, so that in future, we can grow and offer a better, wider range of products to a broader range of New Zealand, to help more people reduce their waste and live healthily on a plant-based diet.

Along with this price increase, we have looked at the quality of our food, and we are modifying some of our recipes to be more in line with the price increase. We're changing some of our ingredients to some higher quality, and more locally sourced, where possible. We've increased the ratio of Veg and Protein to Carb, which has been requested of us a few times over the past few years, and we hope that this change will be received positively over all. As always, any feedback from our customers is greatly appreciated, so drop us a line if you have anything you'd like to suggest or let us know about our service.

Existing Subscriptions
If you had an existing subscription, it has now been cancelled, as these were tied to our old products with our old prices, delivery times, and cut-off times. Orders are now open for you to start a new one, and if you subscribe this week you will get a 5% ongoing discount off the new prices.

Other Changes
- Box Creators are no longer Gluten Free by default, but the Gluten Free Box Creators are separate products altogether (find them in the new Gluten Free Collection)
- Box Creators can now be ordered as Subscriptions
- Our Delivery Zones are a little different, with a new map up available to view. Please note we can no longer do deliveries south of Tawa in the Wellington City region on Thursday evenings, but they are available every other weekday.

We hope you will understand our decisions, and we hope that you are able to continue to support us! We're very proud of what we've achieved so far, and hope we can continue for years to come! We obviously can't do this without your support, so we hope that you'll stick with us, and we promise to do our best to impress.

Please don't hesitate to get in touch with us if you have any queries, concerns or feedback!

Ngā Mihi,

Ottilie & the Yum Jar Team