As St Mary by the Sea looks to sell its Torbay site and “replant” its ministry, an ambitious new model centred on food, faith, and community is taking shape. It’s a concept grounded in generosity, but one that also raises complex questions. ShoreLines’ Lizzie Brandon sat down with the church’s vicar, Dion Blundell, to find out the reasons behind the church’s momentous decision and where its future may lie.
St Mary by the Sea’s decision to sell its long-standing Deep Creek Road site marks a significant moment for the East Coast Bays. After more than 140 years in Torbay, the church is preparing to relocate within its parish. It’s a move that has already sparked considerable community discussion, both online and offline.
In a Facebook post, Torbay Business Association expressed its “mixed feelings” about the sale. “I would echo the mixed feelings,” says Dion. “We have mixed feelings too… there’s tremendous grief… and so we now need to focus on something different that we can do.”
The sale is actually not a sudden shift, but the culmination of decades of trying to make the existing site work. “We’ve tried really hard to find a way that could financially work for us, and we haven’t managed to find that.”
At its heart, the decision is financial. The church is “asset-rich and cash-poor”, with buildings that are increasingly expensive to maintain.
“We said, ‘What would it look like if we were to replant our ministry and do something different, something more modest?’”
That “something different” is ambitious.
The proposal centres on a combined worship space and café model, with a commercial daytime café supporting a low-cost evening “social enterprise” café. Meals would cost around $5–$6, with a pay-it-forward element and no one being turned away.
“Our faith says that the three key things are feeding people, clothing people, and housing people. We don’t have the resources to house, but we clothe people through our community shop. We’re hoping we can feed people through a café.”
The concept draws inspiration from what Dion describes as “the innovative model” of Dunedin Bowling Club, where food is prepared at scale by paid staff, reducing waste and cost, while maintaining dignity. Everyone pays something, and everyone participates.
It is, undeniably, a vision rooted in Christian charity, being practical, relational, and intentionally inclusive. However, Dion concedes that the demographics of Caversham and Browns Bay are not comparable. “There’s more poverty there. The poverty on the North Shore is hidden.”
And, as with any bold idea, details matter.
The numbers and other logistics
Perhaps the most striking figure is this: the café would aim to serve upwards of 500 people a night, five nights a week.
That’s not an aspirational target. “Five hundred is our break-even point… If we serve less than that, we’re not able to make it work.”
In the hospitality sector, still feeling the effects of Covid and in a cost-of-living environment that now has an unwelcome layer of spiralling fuel prices, those numbers inevitably raise questions.
Dion acknowledges the church’s model differs from traditional cafés, relying less on seated diners and more on volume. In other words, people collecting meals to take home.
But even so, the scale required is significant. It depends not only on need, but on consistent, sustained participation.
And where to locate the café? While central Browns Bay has been earmarked as the preferred option, for its foot traffic and public transport links, no new site has yet been secured.
St Mary by the Sea’s parish boundaries extend from the Ōkura River to the north side of Rosedale Road, and from the motorway to the coast. Options are therefore relatively limited, but a few other possibilities have been identified.
These include the former accident and emergency site at Northcross, a small block of shops at the corner of Rosedale and East Coast Roads (though possibly too small), and even the recently closed British pub site in Rothesay Bay.
At this stage, however, all of these remain just that: possibilities. The purchase of any new premises is dependent upon the sale of the current property.
“We’re not really in the stage yet where we can start going and looking and saying, ‘Hey, we’d like to come here, please,’ because we don’t know how long our sales process might take. There might be an option available for us in May this year, or it might be May the year after, or May the year after that. We just don’t know how long this is going to take.”
Then there is the question of access.
The model assumes people can get there, whether that’s families picking up dinner on the way home from, say, soccer practice, or individuals experiencing food insecurity.
Yet transport is an increasingly real barrier. Fuel costs remain high, and while central Browns Bay offers bus routes and walkability, evening services may be limited.
For those already under financial pressure or without reliable transport, even a low-cost meal could be difficult to access.
Dion absolutely recognises the importance of location, noting that any site would need strong public transport links. But the practicalities, particularly at night, remain an open question.
Presence, not just provision
Where the model becomes more nuanced is in its emphasis on being present, not just on providing kai to those who need it. It’s about creating a space where people gather, connect, and support one another.
“As you come together as a community, things become possible that you could never imagine.”
That philosophy also shapes the decision not to prioritise food delivery models, even though that could, arguably, reach more people.
The church’s intention is something broader: connection, dignity, and shared experience.
The vision and the open questions
For now, much remains unresolved.
The success of the model depends on a series of variables, including securing the appropriate site, achieving the required scale, and ensuring people can actually access what is being offered.
There are also wider questions that sit beyond the scope of the project itself. A meal can meet an immediate need, but for those experiencing deeper hardship, including being unhoused, it is only one part of a much larger picture.
Dion explains that the church already works alongside other services and refers people where needed. Still, the café model is not designed to solve systemic issues, nor does it claim to.
It is both an attempt to offer what other food rescue and distribution organisations do not and a reinvention.
Whether it proves workable – financially, logistically, and socially – remains to be seen.
But as the conversation continues, one thing is clear: this is a vision with genuinely good intentions behind it.
To listen in full to ShoreLines’ conversation with Dion Blundell go to https://youtu.be/wAjfgMyW1SI
Full Transcript follows:
Dion Blundell (DB)
St Mary by the Sea was built where it was built as a little kauri chapel, because you could walk up Rock Isle Road from the wharf down at the bottom of Waiake, and so that’s why it is where it is.
We had plans to expand, so we then built a fibrolite building next door that was going to be a temporary worship space for us.
The kauri chapel was removed. That became a historic building that was used by the wider community. And what we call St Mary by the Sea now was meant to be a hall. We ran out of money to do the car park and the rest of it, and so it became our worship space.
But the hall was meant to be removed, and where the hall is, was meant to be a worship space. We started those plans in the 1970s, and we never quite managed to realise our vision. We’ve tried different things over the years.
Not for want of trying, not for want of support of people, but Torbay Anglican churches, we haven’t managed to do what we’ve needed to do to change our buildings.
Lizzie Brandon (ShoreLines)
And now you’ve got a big, serious relocation plan of moving to Browns Bay. So, tell me why now? What’s prompted the decision?
DB
It’s a financial decision.
We realised that we just can’t carry on with our buildings. We’ve tried and tried, and we can’t make the finances work. We realised that we were going to have to close at some stage, and for the last 45 years, we’ve tried really hard to find a way that could financially work for us, and we haven’t managed to find that.
We started to look for ways of changing our finances, and it didn’t look like we would be able to do anything.
So, we said, “What would it look like if we were to replant our ministry and do something different, something more modest?”
Our buildings are expensive to maintain. We have a big piece of land, and we’re asset rich and cash poor. We’ve got a call on our life to help people, and we don’t have the cash to do that.
So, we’re downsizing our worship and our land so that we can still do good in the community.
ShoreLines
There have been some concerns from residents expressed on Facebook about what might happen to the site that is now being sold. I think Torbay Business Association said that it had mixed feelings. Is there anything you can say to reassure people about what might happen with the site?
DB
I would echo the mixed feelings. We have mixed feelings too. We had really hoped that we would be able to make it work, and there’s tremendous grief for us that something that we thought we could make work hasn’t, and so we now need to focus on something different that we can do.
It’s possible that St Mary by the Sea might be bought by a congregation that can afford to run big buildings.
We can’t afford to run big buildings. It’s possible that it might be bought by a developer. At this point in time, it looks like that it’s more likely that a worshiping congregation will purchase it that does have the financial resources to make the building work. I don’t know what the future looks like.
ShoreLines
Would you favour an offer from a congregation that might preserve some of the facilities? I know that there are a few community groups in there, like Raft Studio, and one of the local AA meetings is there. Would that potentially sway you towards an offer?
DB
We don’t make that decision; our trust board makes that decision. I would have hoped that they would look at that favourably and go, actually, if it can stay as a community facility, that would be the best use of that land.
ShoreLines
That’s where we are today. Let’s look forward to the future. Give me an overview of, you used the word “replanting” to Browns Bay. As I understand it, your new site is going to encompass your place of worship, a commercial café, and also an evening social enterprise café. Tell me a bit about this.
DB
In 2019, we changed our worship style to be around café tables. We meet around café tables, we have conversation, and we try to build what we call intergenerational community.
Our goal is that the café becomes our worship space. So, the café will be our worship space on a Sunday. During the week, it will be a place where people can come and have tea, coffee, lunch, morning tea, like any other café.
And we’re hoping that people will patronise us because as they do that, that enables the nighttime social enterprise café to function. It’s a way of paying it forward without paying anything into the system, simply through eating and drinking with us.
Now, the social enterprise café at night. Some of the negative comments on Facebook are that there’ll be all homeless people coming and it will be the downfall of the area.
We’re hoping that normal, everyday people will eat with us. We’re targeting everyone who can’t afford to eat out, and that’s a significant number of people.
If you’re coming home from soccer with your child on a cold winter’s evening, we hope you’ll swing by, bring your Sistema container with you, and take away enough servings of dinner to feed you and your family for the night.
In our social enterprise café, you’ll have a choice of a smoothie, depending on what the seasonal fruit is. You can’t choose your smoothie; it’s whatever we’ve been able to get for a good price that week. There will be a dinner, and there will be a dessert as well. You might have a choice of two desserts if there’s dessert left over from the night before.
ShoreLines
And this is free or subsidised?
DB
No, it’s all paid. We’re looking at somewhere between $5 and $6 a head. You pay for your dinner. If you can afford it, you might choose to pay for someone else’s dinner as well.
And we would never turn anyone away who said, “I can’t pay for dinner tonight.” If there weren’t enough paid-for dinners, we would still feed them.
Our faith says that the three key things are feeding people, clothing people, and housing people. We don’t have the resources to house, but we clothe people through our community shop. We’re hoping we can feed people through a café.
ShoreLines
We know that people are struggling on the Shore, because there are charities like GoodWorks Trust, Salvation Army, Love Soup, Kiwi Harvest, who operate on the Shore, and they tell us that. What lessons are you learning from their operations that you’re carrying into your operations? Are there guidelines and strategies that you can apply?
DB
There’s a food security network on the North Shore, and we’re part of them. We journey with those organisations you’ve mentioned on a monthly basis.
For our local schools, our primary schools and high schools, we say, “When you run a non-uniform day or something special, rather than bringing a gold coin donation, could you please bring a can or some period products or some dried goods along?”
We then repackage those up, and the school will phone us up and say, “We’ve got the Smith family here or the Jones family here. They need a parcel for this group of people.” We’ll package it up and give it to the school, and the school then gives it to the family.
Our community shop makes money, and we use some of the money that the community shop makes to purchase Countdown and New World vouchers, which go in with the food parcels as well.
If there’s a family that’s in need at one of the schools, we pay for their first online shop through GoodWorks Trust so that they can see the benefit and the value they get through working with GoodWorks Trust.
We do our best to align ourselves with what’s already happening, so we’re not doubling up on things.
ShoreLines
I read in your information on the website that you were inspired to do this by what you call the “innovative model of the Dunedin Bowling Club”. Tell me about that and why you’ve picked that as your model.
DB
The key thing about the Dunedin Bowling Club model is that everyone is paid a living wage. No one volunteers. Everyone in the organisation is paid, and they have a sense of dignity. Everyone comes in and purchases their meal. We’re all contributing into the whole.
But the bowling club idea is that you bring your bowl along, you get served in your bowl, and you sit down and eat there if you want company.
But then you have someone who comes along with the stroller and a container and gets four servings and goes home, and when the rest of the family is home, they eat together.
You have families who say, “We’re able to get nutritious food through this with more variety than we can produce ourselves at home.” When you produce something on scale, you can do something that people at home can’t do, and there isn’t the waste either.
You’re only paying for what you need for that night. There’s not leftovers in the fridge that get thrown out.
ShoreLines
And in terms of the bowling club’s location and demographic, is it comparable to the East Coast Bays and Browns Bay? Does that part marry up too?
DB
No, it doesn’t marry up at all. In Cavendon, there’s more poverty there. The poverty on the North Shore is hidden.
We tend to call it food insecurity. Rents are high, mortgages are high, and people really struggle to put food on the table. Our demographics are different, but the struggles are the same.
When we look specifically at central Browns Bay, the need is among retired people. There’s a high female population in those numbers, and the stats suggest there’s significant need there.
ShoreLines
You want to do a lot of good, and you’ve spoken about this hidden need that absolutely echoes what organisations like The Good Works Trust say. And you’re talking big, ambitious numbers here. In fact, somebody on Facebook suggested it must be a typo and that it must be 50 instead of 500. But you are aiming to feed five hundred people per night, five nights a week. Is that right?
DB
We said upwards of five hundred!
ShoreLines
In the environment that we’re in at the moment, there is a cost-of-living crisis. We’ve got the fuel thing going on. We don’t quite know how that’s going play out over the next few months. Tell me how the numbers work for this to work for you, and for this to be viable.
DB
Five hundred is our break-even point. So, 500 people a night is when we’ve been able to cover our lease cost, our staffing, and our food costs. If we serve less than that, we’re not able to make it, make it work. The idea of having the daytime café working at the same time is that when numbers are down, the daytime café can cover the nighttime café. When numbers are up in the nighttime café, when the world’s depressed around us, I’m sure that the daytime café will be depressed.
I think how it will work is that when it’s good for the nighttime café, it’s not so good for the daytime café. When it’s good for the daytime café, it’s not so good for the nighttime café. Our hope is that we’ve got a model that will endure for us over the years.
ShoreLines
And when you’ve spoken to other café owners, restaurant owners – because we know the hospitality industry has been hard since Covid – have they said to you that the numbers you’re talking about are viable? Are, are these the kind of numbers that they’re seeing come through themselves during the day?
DB
No, none of them say that because they offer what you call table service. We’re not offering table service. Yes, we will offer a table and a place for you if you would like that, but our main goal is foot traffic. People coming through and saying, “Actually, I’m collecting food for me and one other,” or, “I’m collecting food for me and a number of others.” So when we talk about feeding 500 people, we talk about 500 heads.
ShoreLines
You say, and this is a very Christian attitude, that the food, this good kai, is available for anyone who needs it. Will you have particular criteria for that?
DB
No criteria. The criteria is that you’d like to eat.
ShoreLines
You’ve also said that this will be a space where the community can support one another in practical ways. Tell me what you mean by that.
DB
As you come together as community, things are able to happen and are possible that you could never imagine. That has been our faith community’s experience – that things become possible which you might not have even thought of. This idea of replanting was option six of six options we looked at, and it was the one that gained traction and enthusiasm as we went along. It’s not where any of us saw this going when we started.
ShoreLines
Do you see it perhaps as part of a bigger wraparound service? People who are experiencing what we call on the Shore food insecurity potentially have other stuff going on. Maybe they’ve been made redundant, they are struggling to pay their rent. Will you have people on site that can help with, um, for example, advice on benefits and so on, like, or MSD to help people back into work or Citizens Advice? Is that something you’ve thought about?
DB
That might be something that we can do further down the road. To start up, our finances are tight. The margins are really small for us, so it might be that we can get some financial help from MSD to do things like that or other stakeholders, maybe, the Tindall Foundation or Foundation North might be able to help us with something like that. For now, the goal is to set up that point of presence and to allow things to organically develop.
ShoreLines
And you’ve explained about desserts, which personally sounds very tempting. Whatever pudding is on offer, you can guarantee I will order. And, also a nutritious smoothie. You’re also looking to partner with businesses, in perhaps the way that KiwiHarvest does when supermarkets have fruit that’s close to its use-by date, for example?
DB
Yes. And it’s food reduction. Sorry, food waste reduction, and it’s finding, what fruit doesn’t look good that we can use in a smoothie because you don’t want to be putting your best fruit in a smoothie.
ShoreLines
You’ve also talked about your community shop, which is a well-established presence in Browns Bay in Inverness Road. Is that going to be consolidated onto the new site or are you leaving the community shop where it is?
DB
I can’t tell you where the new site is at the moment because we don’t have a new site!
We don’t know where we’re going. We won’t know where we’re going until we’re able to sell the building. Once we’ve sold the building, we can then look and see what’s available to us. In our faith, we would say it’s stepping out in faith knowing that this is what we need to do. We don’t have the financial resources to go and purchase another site before we’ve sold.
ShoreLines
You’ve also mentioned the op shop is “a successful community shop to provide clothing”. Consolidating onto one site aside, do you see the role of the shop perhaps evolving rather than selling clothes to the general public? Would it perhaps be a conduit for people in need to actually get clothes and so on? Do you, do you see that happening?
DB
It already is that. We already gift clothes to people who need it. The shop currently distributes some of our food parcels as well, so if you need a food parcel and you’re not associated with a school, the shop is your distribution point for that.
ShoreLines
Picking up on that and picking up on what you said before about the fact that you are kind of in contact with organisations like KiwiHarvest, if you couldn’t find an ideal site, would the food delivery and food package provision service be something that you would potentially look at?
DB
Sorry, I don’t understand that question.
ShoreLines
If you couldn’t find a site that would accommodate the numbers that you want to feed and so on, would you potentially look at offering a food delivery service as an alternative to that?
DB
That would be a possibility.
ShoreLines
Because then you are going to the place of need, I suppose, aren’t you? And you can kind of move it around and reach more people?
DB
Some people have suggested that to us, and it’s certainly something we’ve considered – you know, the Uber Eats model. There is the possibility of, of that. At the moment, our hope is that rather than just meeting the need, we can actually be a community presence. We would value more the community presence than just the provision of food. It’s not just feeding people, it’s everything else that comes when you share food, and I guess when you share compassion.
ShoreLines
It would be remiss of me not to pick up on some of the negative comments that I’ve seen on Facebook. And because somebody is unhoused, I believe very strongly that that should not be the definition of a person. But for some people, potentially who’ll be coming to you for their evening meal, they will be in need of a broader range of support services. Do you have a plan in place to look after people and support people who are in fairly dire straits when you see them?
DB
We already refer to other services. We already work with homeless people, who live on the streets, who live in their cars, um, who couch surf. We already work with the people we come into contact with. That’s our reality. Our reality is every day we are working with someone.
ShoreLines
What are the next steps? We’re, we’re just about at the beginning of April. I see that the deadline– I think that the deadline for sale inquiries for the current site is the 8th of April.
So, what are the next immediate steps for you and St Mary?
DB
We are hoping that on the 8th of April, there will be one or more offers that have come in that are acceptable to our trust board that hold the property and trust for us, and that there will be a workable offer there. That means we can then start to look at where might we locate to.
ShoreLines
Are there options other than Browns Bay?
DB
We are called the Parish of St Mary by the Sea, Torbay. Our northern boundary is Okura River. Our western boundary is the motorway, and our eastern boundary is the water, and our southern boundary is the north side of Rosedale Road, not the south side of Rosedale Road.
The options for us are the old accident and emergency at Northcross. That’s a possibility. Another commercial area that would be a possibility, would be the little block of shops on the corner of Rosedale Road and East Coast Road. Probably too small for what we’re looking at. Rothesay Bay is another option. There is a pub there, the English pub, that’s just closed. I don’t know what that’s marked for.
But we’re not really in the stage yet where we can start going and looking and saying, “Hey, we’d like to come here, please,” because we don’t know how long our sales process might take. There might be an option available for us in May this year or it might be May the year after or May the year after that. We just don’t know how long this is going to take.
ShoreLines
And I guess there’s so much to weigh up, isn’t there? Because there’s the data, because for these numbers and for your excellent motivation behind this, you want to go to the places of greatest need. So, when you do get potential sites, I suppose it’s a question of weighing up where you’ll be and how easy it is for people to get to you and where you can make the greatest impact.
DB
Yes, and central Browns Bay would work well. It has foot traffic, it has bus stops, it has parking, and in our caring for the environment today, public transport is more and more important. Wherever we were, it would need to be somewhere with access to public transport.
ShoreLines
And do the buses run into the evening as well?
DB
Some buses do. It depends on the time of the week. But yes, most of them have stopped by about nine or ten o’clock at night.
ShoreLines
As we sit here right now, on the two sides of your brain, the heart side and your very logical side, what are you most excited about, and what’s the most daunting thing in front of you right now?
DB
The most daunting thing is not knowing where we’re going. It’s hard to take people in a direction where you don’t know where you’re going because you can’t yet explore that. The most exciting thing on the heart side is that we get to work with people in the community, which has always been what I would call God’s call on our life.
ShoreLines
Dion Blundell, thank you for your time.
DB
Thanks.
